{"id":33476,"date":"2011-04-03T15:43:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T15:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/weight-loss-supplement-has-teensy-potential-side-effect-you-might-get-mad-cow-disease-discoblog\/"},"modified":"2011-04-03T15:43:09","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T15:43:09","slug":"weight-loss-supplement-has-teensy-potential-side-effect-you-might-get-mad-cow-disease-discoblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/weight-loss-supplement-has-teensy-potential-side-effect-you-might-get-mad-cow-disease-discoblog.php","title":{"rendered":"Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect: You Might *Get Mad Cow Disease*! | Discoblog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hGC), a hormone produced during pregnancy, is isolated from the urine of pregnant women and used to treat infertility<\/a>. Since the 1950s<\/a>, however, it’s also been used as a weight-loss aid—and still is, even though there’s no solid evidence<\/a> showing it works.<\/p>

But taking hCG could be worse than just ineffective: A new study<\/a> shows that doses of the hormone can transmit prions, the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease and its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease<\/a>, an invariably fatal form of dementia that riddles the brain with holes<\/a> (photo).<\/p>

That’s right: There’s a potential risk of contracting deadly, brain-destroying illness by injecting yourself with proteins taken from other people’s urine—and you won’t even lose weight.<\/p>

The New York Times<\/em> lamely wrote earlier this month that hCG as a weight-loss regimen “has fans and skeptics”<\/a>—but Travis Saunders at Obesity Panacea says that spreading mad cow is just one more reason to avoid “the most thoroughly debunked weight loss gimmick in medical history.”<\/a><\/p>

No prion diseases have been transmitted through urine yet, the authors of the study say, but it is theoretically possible. And even ...<\/p>

<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hGC), a hormone produced during pregnancy, is isolated from the urine of pregnant women and used to treat infertility. Since the 1950s, however, it’s also been used as a weight-loss aid—and still is, even though there’s no … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}