EWES infected with scrapie, the sheep equivalent of mad cow disease, can transmit the disease to lambs through their milk. Should we be worried? Does BSE spread to calves or even humans in cows鈥� milk? And do mothers with variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of BSE, spread it to breastfeeding infants?
鈥淎bsolutely not,鈥� says Chris Higgins of the UK government鈥檚 Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, which discussed the scrapie results before their publication online this week in BMC Veterinary Research. Higgins says there is plenty of epidemiological and analytical evidence that BSE doesn鈥檛 spread in cows鈥� milk, and no evidence yet that vCJD spreads in mothers鈥� milk.
However, the new findings do help explain how scrapie spreads in sheep.
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Experiments on lambs genetically predisposed to developing scrapie provided the proof. At the UK Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, Timm Konold and his colleagues fed 18 lambs with milk from scrapie-infected ewes, while 15 controls received uncontaminated milk.
Gut tissues from two out of three culled 鈥渟crapie-fed鈥� lambs were positive for scrapie, as were biopsies from the rectums of the 15 surviving scrapie-fed animals. Rectal samples from controls were negative, implying that milk spread the disease.
鈥淟ambs fed with milk from scrapie-infected ewes were positive for scrapie鈥�
BSE and vCJD 鈥� Learn more in our comprehensive special report.
