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Comment in:
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Vet Rec. 1994 Oct 29;135(18):440.
Epidemiological
observations on spongiform encephalopathies in
captive wild animals in the British Isles.
Veterinary Science
Group, Institute of Zoology, London.
Since 1986, scrapie-like spongiform
encephalopathy has been diagnosed in 19 captive
wild animals of eight species at or from eight
zoological collections in the British Isles. The
affected animals have comprised members of the
family Bovidae: one nyala (Tragelaphus angasi),
four eland (Taurotragus oryx), and six greater
kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), one gemsbok
(Oryx gazella), one Arabian oryx (Oryx
leucoryx), and one scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx
dammah), and members of the family Felidae: four
cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) and one puma (Felis
concolor). In addition, three cases of a
spongiform encephalopathy of unknown aetiology
have been reported in ostriches (Struthio
camellus) from two zoos in north west Germany.
Three features suggest that some of these cases
may have been caused by the agent of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). First, they
have been temporally and geographically
coincident with the BSE epidemic. Secondly, in
all the ungulates for which details are
available, it is possible that either the
affected animal itself, or the herd into which
it was born or moved, had been exposed to
proprietary feeds containing ruminant-derived
protein or other potentially contaminated
material, and all the carnivores had been fed
parts of cattle carcases judged unfit for human
consumption. Thirdly, the pathological results
of inoculating mice with a homogenate of fixed
brain tissue from the nyala and from one greater
kudu were similar to the results of inoculating
mice with BSE brain tissue.
PMID: 7817514 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]