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Home Journal Highlights Gene Expression Changes Occur 6–21 Months After BSE Infection
Gene Expression Changes Occur 6–21 Months After BSE Infection Print E-mail

 

Prion diseases are still poorly understood. Otto Windl of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency, Surrey, United Kingdom, et al. used microarrays to examine expression of over 20,000 genes from brain samples taken from cattle experimentally infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and slaughtered at varying times postinfection. They found changes in expression in many genes with diverse functions at 6 to 21 months postinfection, which by the standards of prion disease is quite early, says Windl. "These changes are much earlier than the detection of the usual diagnostic marker, PrPSc, in the brains of such infected animals," he says. While brain tissue cannot be used for a diagnostic in living animals, "a better understanding of the disease process might lead to better diagnostic methods, and even, in the long run, to therapeutic intervention. We plan to apply this type of study in the field (as opposed to in experimentally infected animals), and to other species such as sheep," and in more diagnostically useful tissues such as blood, says Windl.

(Y. Tang, W. Xiang, S.A.C. Hawkins, H.A. Kretzschmar, and O. Windl, 2009. Transcriptional changes in the brains of cattle orally infected with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent precede detection of infectivity. J. Virol. 83:9464-9473.)