Control of scrapie eventually possible?

Abstract

After a brief description of the scrapie situation in the Netherlands, the technical progress made in aspects of scrapie diagnosis is reported. Emphasis is placed on the use of immuno-histochemistry (IHC) in the post-mortem histological diagnosis and on the recently published preclinical test for scrapie, in which IHC is applied to tonsillar biopsies. These two approaches use the same IHC technique and enable us to confirm suspected scrapie in individual animals, and for certain genotypes even in the preclinical phase. The tonsillar biopsy method could eventually lead to an infection- or PrPSc-detection method at flock level. Further work is required, including validation of the assay for various breeds, genotypes, and strains of the agent, and the conversion of the test into a more practical assay. The article continues with a discussion of several scrapie control strategies, describing briefly schemes tried in various countries, and elaborates on a proposed scrapie control scheme that could be suitable for the Netherlands. This scheme is essentially based on breeding for resistance, based on PrP genotyping.