Clinical and Epidemiological Investigations of BSE in Bavaria

A total of 1007 cattle were examined clinically, with special regard to the central nervous system. They consisted of 949 cattle that were examined at the Munich abattoir, 27 cattle suspected to have BSE (6 of which turned out to be positive), 21 'cohort' cattle in herds with a case of BSE, 10 cattle with CNS disorders other than BSE, and 69 cattle without evidence of a CNS disorder. Clinical findings were in accordance with those described in the literature. However, their specificity, as assessed in the cattle at the abattoir, was too low to make clinical screening of slaughtering cattle useful. The number of cases of BSE was much too small for the cluster analysis that was planned originally. Blood and CSF samples were taken from cattle that were not examined at the abattoir.