Rapid Diagnosis of Scrapie in the Mouse

RESEARCH into scrapie, an enigma of veterinary medicine which may embody principles of considerable interest for human disease, commonly involves demonstration of agent activity or its titration. A great step forward was made by Chandler1when he showed the disease could be produced in mice, and biological titration in these animals is currently widely employed. This takes 6–8 months. From a recent study of multiple sclerosis, with which scrapie has been linked2, we were led into an immunological study of scrapie itself. We found that brain or spleen from a scrapie mouse when injected into a guinea-pig (adult Hartley) led to the appearance of blood lymphocytes which were more highly sensitized to scrapie brain or spleen than to normal brain or spleen.