ZM0304: Detection of metabolic markers for scrapie infected sheep using NMR spectroscopy
Wednesday 25 June 2003
This research project aims to investigate whether a proposed technique could lead to a blood test for scrapie infection in sheep.
Background
A pre-mortem test to detect scrapie in sheep would be a useful tool for scientists studying scrapie and BSE. It may also be useful within the National Scrapie Plan, which aims to reduce and eradicate scrapie from the UK sheep flock.
Research Approach
This study undertook a preliminary examination by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of plasma samples from scrapie infected and healthy sheep in order to establish whether there were consistent differences which might lead to a blood test for this condition. This was investigated via the following steps: development of a rapid and effective sample clean-up which provided high quality NMR spectra while retaining the required sample information content; testing the proposed procedure on a bulk sample of sheep plasma; using the procedure to generate high quality NMR spectra from plasma samples from 10 scrapie infected and from 10 healthy sheep; processing this data using wavelet analysis or other appropriate advanced statistical techniques so as to identify consistent spectral differences from the two classes.
Results and findings
The results of this short pilot study were promising to the use of metabolomics to identify surrogate markers for TSE disease. It was shown that the ratio of concentration of several metabolites, identified by NMR, could be used to distinguish between blood samples from sheep infected with scrapie and blood samples from uninfected, control sheep.