Scrapie control under new strain

摘要

Sheep believed to be resistant to scrapie are succumbing to atypical infections and a newly identified strain of the disease. Eradication programmes based on selective breeding should be reappraised. Scrapie is a fatal brain disease of sheep and goats and is part of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) family. This family also includes chronic wasting disease of deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Unlike these relative newcomers, however, scrapie has been present for more than 250 years in European sheep flocks and has spread to many other parts of the world.