31.   The prion disease is unknown among cattle in America.

32.   The presence of such a protein is the diagnostic hallmark of prion diseases, she said.

33.   The urinary prion seems to be an excellent marker for the progression of prion diseases, Gabizon said.

34.   The urinary prion may shed light on an unsolved mystery regarding how prion diseases spread among deer, elk and other wild animals.

35.   There are no known cases of someone being infected with a prion disease from infected blood.

36.   These aggregates closely resemble the deposits found in prion diseases such as vCJD, Cooper says.

37.   To give an animal a prion disease, researchers must inject it with the ground-up tissue from the brains of animals that were ill.

38.   To prevent prion diseases from spreading, many governments ban the presence of nervous tissue in human and certain animal food supplies.

39.   To test that idea, the researchers took urine samples from hamsters, humans and cattle infected with known prion diseases, and from healthy controls.