Question at position 60 Why is it so difficult to develop treatments for prion diseases?The causative agent is a self-proteinIt is not a bacteriaMutations make vaccine development difficultAll of the aboveClear my selection

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Question at position 60 asks why it is so difficult to develop treatments for prion diseases. Each option is evaluated on its own merits and in relation to the overall challenge posed by prions.
Option 1: The causative agent is a self-protein. Prions are misfolded forms of a normal host protein (PrP) and operate without any nucleic acid. This self-protein nature means they can propagate by inducing misfolding of the normal protein, evading many conventional antimicrobial strategies that target foreign pathogens. This is a key reason treatments are challenging.
Option 2: It is not a bacteria. Prions are not bacteria or other microbes; they are proteinaceous infectious particles. This classification matters because many therapies target bacterial or viral features, and prions do not share those targets. Their non-self replication mechanism complicates drug design that relies on typical microbial biology.
Option 3: Mutations make vaccine development difficult. While prions lack nucleic acids, they exist in multiple strains distinguished by conformational differences of the PrP protein. These prion strains can yield different disease phenotypes and rates of progression, and antibodies or vaccines may fail to neutralize all strains uniformly. The absence of a stable genetic genome and the conformational diversity contribute to the difficulty in creating broadly effective interventions.
Option 4: All of the above. When considering the self-protein nature, non-bacterial identity, and strain/conformational variability that hinder immune targeting and drug effectiveness, the collective challenges described in the previous options indeed explain why treating prion diseases is particularly hard.

Question at position 60 Why is it so difficult to develop treatments for prion diseases?The causative agent is a self-proteinIt is not a bacteriaMutations make vaccine development difficultAll of the aboveClear my selection

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