Histopathological similarities between scrapie and cuprizone toxicity in mice

Abstract

PREVIOUS work with scrapie led us to conclude1 that the transmissible agent was unlikely to be a conventional virus. We have presented evidence2 that the transmissible agent may be, or may be associated with, a small basic protein (polypeptide) of the kind involved in the production of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, and we have recorded the possible occurrence of the agent in tissues of normal animals3-5. These observations have neither been confirmed nor disproved in other laboratories and various other hypotheses on the nature of scrapie and its transmissible agent remain unproved6-8. The "slow virus" hypothesis still favoured by some9 is now at variance with the impressive experimental evidence from ultraviolet irradiation studies10-13 that the transmissible agent may not contain nucleic acid. © 1971 Nature Publishing Group.