There are always more articles than you can read about TSEs, and I can only make an apology that some may be missed. If you feel that your article is missing and should be here, please forward it
Articles will probably not be still present on this page for greater than 6 months If you want an excellent quarterly bulletin "BSE, CJD, Scrapie: Prion related diseases" send a cheque for 22 pounds payable to the British Library to: Health Care Information Services, British Library Document Supply Centre, Boston Spa, Weatherby, W. Yorkshire, UK LS23 7BQ (phone 0171 412 7470 for further info, the people directly involved are on 01937 546039)If you want a monthly bulletin "BSE and CJD" send a cheque for 40 pounds payable to the 'PHLS Board' to the Library at the Public Health Laboratory, 61 Colindale Ave, Colindale, London NW9 UK.(phone 0181 200 4400 for further info)
The best direct free search is done via medline on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
If you want to go to the articles
Science 1997;275:402-5
At attempt was made to detect prion protein in the inoculum, none was found and yet the disease was transmitted. The methods used for detection were highly sensitive but could be argued simply not to be adequately sensitive to find the small amounts present. The paper was argued at the time in the scientific community but further research is necessary.
BMJ 1997;314:170
The report from Collinge et al (Lancet) that the marker for CJD (prion) can be found in the tonsil of a 35 yr old woman that died of nv-CJD.
BMJ 1997;314:170
Four Israeli scientists have urged that all Jewish residents of Libya or Tunian origin should undergo a blood test to identify carriers of CJD before they donate blood or organs. Most of these jewish emigrants went to Israel and only 1 in 100 of those were affected. There are around 1000 Israeli carriers of CJD
New Scientist 11 Jan 1997 p15
This reports information from Moira Bruce of an experiment in which knock out mice' lymphphocytes that cannot produce any PrPc were stimulated with concavalin A. They did not increase activated T cells as much as normal mouse lymphocytes. They also found that PrPc on the surface of lymphocytes increased in response to con A stimulation. The article suggests that this may be the way in which the agent of TSE is spread to the brain (but this would not agree with Aguzzi's findings). The apparent necessessity of PrP in the genetics of animals when there does not seem to be any difference in the life expectancy of knock out mice vs normals might mean that lab conditions are artificially clean suggests Bruce. The work suggests 'that gene therapy is not an option in preventing prion disease' says Bruce.
Veterinary Record 15.2.97 140;140:167-74.
The most important factor of this paper is that it shows specific distribution petterns of disease in the brains of the sheep and that the distribution patterns cross breeds. Although certain breeds were most likely to develop specific pathology patterns they did not always. Only 7 patterns could be easily separated using microscopy. This surely should have led to much research into the specific strains of disease that would be indicated but no work seems to have been done looking into the validity of the apparent strains by inoculation into mice and no work has been done to associate the strains with BSE. The reason why the paper has taken around 6 years to become published is also unclear.
ASM news 1997;63:83-87
It explains how the change in society opens the possibility for the growth of specific diseases and how BSE is an example. The information given about BSE was taken directly from MAFF publications and hence consideres that BSE was derived from scrapie. It also assumes that the reason why BSE continued after the feed ban was because infectivity was still in stored MBM. It now seems that neither of these are true as there has been no association so far with scrapie and the MBM in the feed chain disappeared very quickly. A better explanation now given is that infected meat products continued to enter bovine feed from cattle slaughtered after the feed ban. The logic of the argument concerning societal changes remains reasonable, however: large number of genetically similar cattle receiving the same feed in an entire country and this opening the door to large outbreaks.
This is the most complex discussion available of the law in Europe concerning the free trade laws and the ability of the EC to alter them at will. The problem was always that individual countries would continue with relatively selfish objectives and so the EC was arranged so that the EC as a whole could bypass the selfishness of this. As a result there has been a number of bruised politicians and high bills put to the EC. The beef crisis has been particularly bad in that incompitence by the UK Government has led to scientific mismanagement of BSE and that followed by a change in the eating habits of the population of the EC. i.e. many European countries see themselves as having paid, through a free market, for the action of one of their members.
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