Submitted by Blakut t3_11mpj0v in askscience
From what I understand, prions are proteins that are misfolded, that when interacting with the same properly folded protein in the human body causes them to misfold too, eventually leading to CJD and death. If a person is infected and becomes pregnant, do these proteins go into the baby too?
iayork t1_jbjxuxb wrote
Probably not.
> Mother-to-offspring prion transmission appears to be prion-strain specific as evidence in other animal species including humans, Syrian hamsters and sheep infected with the classical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agent show that progeny from infected females at the moment of gestation do not develop prion disease in the long-term
—Detection of CWD prions in naturally infected white-tailed deer fetuses and gestational tissues by PMCA
As that article and several others show, some prion diseases such as chronic wasting disease of deer can spread from mother to fetus, but there’s no evidence of that ever having happened in humans.