The infectious agent behind diseases such as mad cow, scrapie and variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease may not necessarily be rogue prion proteins, say British researchers—a suggestion that flies in the face of current dogma about how these diseases are spread.

Although deformed prions are a characteristic of these diseases, they may not be the initial infectious agent, says lead researcher Martin Jeffrey of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency–Lasswade near Edinburgh. The researchers are basing their theory on how these proteins are absorbed in the sheep gut.

Experts contacted by Nature Medicine declined to comment on the controversial paper.

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