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This study is designed to provide a risk assessment of whether sheep, experimentally infected with atypical scrapie, harbour infectivity in tissues relevant to food safety.
Background:<BR> Very little is known about atypical scrapie affected sheep in terms of distribution of infectivity within the body tissues. There are regulations in place which control the removal of specified risk material (SRM) from lambs and sheep destined for the human food chain but it is uncertain whether this will protect consumers from the unknown risks of atypical scrapie.
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Research Approach:<BR>This study is designed to provide a risk assessment of whether sheep, experimentally infected with atypical scrapie, harbour infectivity in tissues relevant to food safety. It will also provide much needed pathogenesis information about this novel transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) and reveal any clinically important differences from classical scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in sheep. Tissue samples from sheep orally infected with atypical scrapie will be collected. These include brain, spleen, kidney, liver and various muscle tissues. Tissues will be processed using a range of anti-PrP antibodies including P4 which reveals the prion protein from atypical scrapie on Western blots and BG4 which has produced positive staining in our atypical scrapie case cerebellum with immunohistochemistry.
<p>Find more about this project and other FSA food safety-related projects at the <a href="http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/" target="_blank">Food Standards Agency Research webpage</a>.