Jan. 29, 2009

BSE test for live animals may be near

Canadian researchers and collaborators in Germany may have found a  new way to test for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in cows that could revolutionize the cattle industry and eventually change beef inspection protocol worldwide.

Christoph Sensen (left), Bob Church (right).

This is viewed as a major breakthrough because until now the diagnosis of the disease could only be done using brain samples from dead animals.

Researchers studied 19 CWD-infected and non-infected elk and 16 BSE-infected and non-infected cattle and were able to identify specific DNA sequences in blood samples of live animals infected with CWD (elk) or BSE (cattle).

“The next steps are to analyze a time course series for BSE-infected cattle, to screen different cattle breeds for variances in the sequence patterns and also to look at cattle with brain tumors, brain trauma and other brain infections to make sure we are really picking up BSE,” says Christoph Sensen, the principal investigator from the University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine. “Once that is done, our team sees the possibility for the production of a low-cost, high-output standard test kit for industry use in the next few years.”

It is expected that a future test kit would be cheaper than currently used post-mortem BSE tests, available at a price that would be affordable for most farmers.

Bob Church (left) Christoph Sensen (right).

“It would be possible to certify live animals and beef to be ‘BSE-tested’ and to keep the export channels open at all times,” says Stefanie Czub, DVM/PhD, a study co-author and head of the CFIA BSE laboratory and a part of the University of Calgary, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.

Kevin Keough from the Alberta Prion Research Institute says the research findings hold much promise, “There is currently no reliable way to tell if an animal may have a prion infection before it becomes obviously sick. If there were a reliable way to know, it would be of great benefit to producers, processors and wildlife managers.” 

The research findings are published in the January edition of the Oxford Journal Nucleic Acids Research. The research is a collaboration between researchers from the University of Calgary, scientists from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and collaborators at the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health and University of Göttingen, Germany and the US-based company Chronix Biomedical.

The research was funded by the Alberta Prion Research Institute (APRI) and Chronix Biomedical.
Canada's total beef exports are worth $2.2 billion annually. Alberta is the country’s largest exporter of cattle, followed by Ontario. Canada is the third-largest exporter of beef in the world.