For many who are not strict vegetarians, the scientific news is getting worse. They have now discovered that BSE (Mad Cow Disease) and Scrapie (Mad Sheep Disease) infects much more than the brain and nerve tissue. A new study just published reveals that markers for the disease are found throughout the body.
Prions are largely contained within the nervous and lymphoid tissue of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) infected animals. However, following advances in diagnostic sensitivity, PrPSc, a marker for prion disease, can now be located in a wide range of viscera and body fluids including muscle, saliva, blood, urine and milk, raising concerns that exposure to these materials could contribute to the spread of disease in humans and animals. Previously we demonstrated low levels of infectivity in the liver of sheep experimentally challenged with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. In this study we show that PrPSc accumulated in the liver of 89% of sheep naturally infected with scrapie and 100% of sheep challenged with BSE, at both clinical and preclinical stages of the disease. PrPSc was demonstrated in the absence of obvious inflammatory foci and was restricted to isolated resident cells, most likely Kupffer cells.
Citation: Everest SJ, Ramsay AM, Chaplin MJ, Everitt S, Stack MJ, et al. (2011) Detection and Localisation of PrPSc in the Liver of Sheep Infected with Scrapie and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. PLoS ONE 6(5): e19737. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019737
Editor: Jason C. Bartz, Creighton University, United States of America
Received: December 30, 2010; Accepted: April 5, 2011; Published: May 12, 2011
The United States and other governments have insisted that the meat being sold is safe because it does not contain any "SRM", spcified risk material. This is meat that would contain nerve tissue. Japan refused to important any more US beef when they found a shipment that contained some specified risk material. Not all cows, sheep, goats, deer, or eld are infected with a spongiform disease, but the risk is steadily increasing. The evidence is pointing towards Alzheimer's being an infectious disease similar to CJD (human Mad Cow Disease) and animal Mad Cow and Scrapie Diseases.