Circulation of prions within dust on a scrapie affected farm.

Kevin C Gough,Claire A Baker,Steve A Hawkins,Ben C Maddison,Hugh A Simmons

doi:10.1186/s13567-015-0176-1

Abstract

Prion diseases are fatal neurological disorders that affect humans and animals. Scrapie of sheep/goats and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) of deer/elk are contagious prion diseases where environmental reservoirs have a direct link to the transmission of disease. Using protein misfolding cyclic amplification we demonstrate that scrapie PrPSc can be detected within circulating dusts that are present on a farm that is naturally contaminated with sheep scrapie. The presence of infectious scrapie within airborne dusts may represent a possible route of infection and illustrates the difficulties that may be associated with the effective decontamination of such scrapie affected premises.

Highlights

Prion diseases are fatal neurological disorders that affect humans and animals
* Correspondence: ben.maddison@adas.co.uk 2ADAS UK, School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, The University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE12 5RD, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article remain a potential source of infectivity for many years [9] and we have demonstrated that scrapie Disease-associated prion protein (PrPSc) can be detected on a range of surfaces within the farm providing likely sources of prion exposure [10]
This observation suggested that dusts accumulating within buildings that have housed scrapie infected sheep may contain scrapie prions

Summary

Introduction

Prion diseases are fatal neurological disorders that affect humans and animals. Scrapie of sheep/goats and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) of deer/elk are contagious prion diseases where environmental reservoirs have a direct link to the transmission of disease. * Correspondence: ben.maddison@adas.co.uk 2ADAS UK, School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, The University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE12 5RD, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article remain a potential source of infectivity for many years [9] and we have demonstrated that scrapie PrPSc can be detected on a range of surfaces within the farm providing likely sources of prion exposure [10]. For the scrapie affected farm, dust samples were taken from two barns

Results

Conclusion