Award details

Natural modes of scrapie transmission

Reference	BBS/E/I/00000565
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Nora Hunter
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	The Pirbright Institute
Department	The Pirbright Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	307,104
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/1997
End date	31/03/2007
Duration	120 months

Abstract

The means by which TSEs transmit naturaly between ruminants remains unknown. It is thought that a common route of transmission may be oral, however there are other potential routes of infection including maternal, contact and via skin wounds or scratches. It is known from epidemiological modelling that the maternal route of infection alone cannot sustain an epidemic. One of the aims of this project therefore is to investigate other routes of transmission: oral, intravenous and scarification. An additional aim is to carry out further studies of TSEs in goats, which are of increasing economic importance in the non-cattle milk market. Because of limited information on their TSE genetics, goats are being grouped with sheep in the National Scrapie Plan. Goats have so far not been found to encode the ARR allele associated in sheep with TSE resistance and so the NSP, if implemented in goats could wipe out the entire UK goat herd. We already know that, unlike in sheep, PrP codon 142 is important in control of TSE incubation period in goats and with limited targetted genotyping in goat herds, we may be able to find new genotypes to study. We also propose to carry out limited numbers of challenges of goats with various sources of scrapie (SSBP/1, CPD/1) by the iv and oral routes and to compare the pathogenesis in different genotypes.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Agri-food (AF)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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