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Book Review
Risk Analysis of Prion Diseases
in Animals
David Adams and Corrinne Ida Lasmézas, editors
OIE Scientific and Technical Review 22 (2003), ISBN 92-9044-573-4, Pages:
346, Price: 45 Euros
Suggested citation
for this article:
Mahy BWJ. Risk analysis of prion diseases in animals [book review].
Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2004 Jun [date cited]. Available
from: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no6/03-0948.htm
Although scrapie, a prion disease of sheep, has been recognized since
the 18th century, it was the dramatic emergence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE) in British cattle in the late 1980s that brought the dangers of
prion diseases into prominence. The subsequent spread of this disease
into humans as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) remains one
of the unsolved emerging infectious disease mysteries of the 20th century.
This issue (OIE Scientific and Technical Review 22 [2003]) of the Scientific
and Technical Review of the Office International des Epizooties comes
11 years after a previous issue about BSE. Much has happened since then;
this multi-author volume provides an excellent account of what is known
about prion diseases in animals, including BSE, which has now spread from
the United Kingdom to 14 other countries, and remains an important risk
to human health. As a consequence of BSE emergence, research has been
expanded considerably into transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE).
This research has resulted in improved diagnostic tests, which have contributed
to risk management, even though our understanding of the underlying molecular
pathogenesis of TSE remains limited.
The 17 chapters in this book are written by experts from many countries
and illustrate the various approaches to risk management in specific regions
of the world. In addition to BSE, the book contains chapters about TSE
of North America such as scrapie, transmissible mink encephalopathy, and
chronic wasting disease of deer and elk; the last disease has recently
spread from its endemic Colorado-Wyoming area to six other states in the
United States, as well as Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada.
With the recognition that BSE had spread in the United Kingdom and many
other countries through feeding contaminated mammalian meat-and-bone meal
to ruminants, a ban on this practice was instigated in the European Union
in 1994. This ban has since been adopted by many other regions of the
world. In 2000, the European Union strengthened the ban to prohibit feeding
processed animal proteins to farmed animals kept, fattened, or bred to
produce food. This measure has undoubtedly helped to prevent or reduce
numbers of cases of BSE in ruminants but incidentally has led to a new
science-based industry for feed analysis. This industry uses sophisticated
molecular techniques such as near infrared spectroscopy and microscopy,
polymerase chain reaction, and immunoassays to check feed for animal by-products,
and to prevent intraspecies recycling (cannibalism), which undoubtedly
caused the BSE epidemic that resulted in the death of 186,000 cattle from
1985 to 2002.
I recommend this book as an excellent source of information on all aspects
of prion diseases in animals.
Brian W.J. Mahy*
*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
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