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Transmission of scrapie prions to primate after an extended silent incubation period

2015; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/srep11573

2045-2322

Emmanuel Comoy, Jacqueline Mikol, Sophie Luccantoni‐Freire, Evelyne Correia, Nathalie Lescoutra‐Etchegaray, Valérie Durand, Capucine Dehen, Olivier Andréoletti, Cristina Casalone, Jüergen A. Richt, Justin J. Greenlee, Thierry Baron, Sylvie L. Benestad, Paul Brown, Jean‐Philippe Deslys,

Prion Diseases and Protein Misfolding

Classical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (c-BSE) is the only animal prion disease reputed to be zoonotic, causing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans and having guided protective measures for animal and human health against animal prion diseases. Recently, partial transmissions to humanized mice showed that the zoonotic potential of scrapie might be similar to c-BSE. We here report the direct transmission of a natural classical scrapie isolate to cynomolgus macaque, a highly relevant model for human prion diseases, after a 10-year silent incubation period, with features similar to those reported for human cases of sporadic CJD. Scrapie is thus actually transmissible to primates with incubation periods compatible with their life expectancy, although fourfold longer than BSE. Long-term experimental transmission studies are necessary to better assess the zoonotic potential of other prion diseases with high prevalence, notably Chronic Wasting Disease of deer and elk and atypical/Nor98 scrapie.