NR AORM
AU Comoy,E.E.; Auvre,F.; Marce,D.; Deslys,J.P.
TI BSE diagnosis in sheep: principle of a rapid differential test and first results in field
QU International Conference - Prion diseases: from basic research to intervention concepts - TSE-Forum, 08.10.-10.10.2003, Gasteig, München - Poster session - DG-56
PT Konferenz-Poster
AB
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is now under control in most European countries through removal of specified risk offals and systematic testing at the slaughterhouse. Nevertheless, this agent is experimentally transmissible by oral route to sheep, leading to a disease undistinguishable from scrapie on clinical signs and pathology. BSE contamination of sheep would represent a major human health problem, since the disease may become endemic due to the wide distribution of infectivity in ovine peripheral organs. In this hypothesis, the destruction of all British sheep flocks has been proposed at the end of 2001 when the first positive BSE case in sheep was thought to have been discovered in the UK.
To better monitor the risk and avoid to take extreme measures, strategies of certification and large scale screenings can be proposed. The tools are already available but the question is then to detect among the TSE positive animals detected those which could be infected by BSE. Classical injection to mice, and strain typing, is a long and heavy method that is unadapted for numerous samples needing a rapid answer. Thus rapid biochemical tests seem to constitute the only practical approach to test a large number of samples and select those with a typical profile for further analysis.
During the development of very sensitive rapid tests (corresponding today to the CEA-Biorad Elisa and western blot tests for BSE) we have discovered that a specific epitope of the PrPres could be specifically destroyed in BSE versus classical scrapie strains. We have also identified unusual proteinase K sensitive scrapie strains which are not detected by classical tests.
The last results on BSE detection in sheep and on unusual scrapie strains will be exposed with the analysis of the role of the specific epitope which is selectively destroyed in BSE.
AD Emmanuel E. Comoy, Frédéric Auvre, Dominique Marce, Jean-Philippe Deslys, Atomic Energy Commission, France
SP englisch
PO Deutschland