Abstract
SCRAPIE may be diagnosed rapidly in the experimental mouse by inoculating some tissue (brain, spleen, muscle, for example) into a guinea-pig and measuring the degree to which the guinea-pig lymphocytes become sensitized to scrapie mouse brain (or spleen) as compared with normal mouse brain (or spleen)1. Lymphocyte sensitization is measured by the macrophage electrophoresis migration (MEM) test2–4. This in principle depends on the observation that when lymphocytes are brought into contact with specific antigen they elaborate some material (involving protein synthesis5) which causes normal guinea-pig peritoneal macrophages to travel more slowly in an electric field. Thus normal guinea-pig macrophages are used as an indicator system for lymphocyte-antigen interaction. The percentage slowings induced by such interactions are calculated and a high percentage indicates lymphocyte sensitization to the test antigen.
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