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Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation Vol. 20 Issue 4, 522-526
Copyright © 2008 by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians
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Brief Communications

Western blot detection of PrPSc in archived paraffin-embedded brainstem from scrapie-affected sheep

Robert A. Kunkle1, Eric M. Nicholson, Semakaleng Lebepe-Mazur, Dennis L. Orcutt, Megan L. Srinivas, Justin J. Greenlee, David P. Alt and Amir N. Hamir

Correspondence: 1Corresponding Author: Robert A. Kunkle, National Animal Disease Center, ARS, USDA, 2300 Dayton Avenue, P.O. Box 70, Ames, IA 50010. Robert.Kunkle{at}ars.usda.gov

Scrapie is a naturally occurring fatal neurodegenerative disease of adult sheep and goats, one of a group of mammalian diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) or prion diseases. Immunoassays that identify disease-associated prion protein (PrPSc) are integral to the diagnosis of scrapie and other prion diseases. Results obtained by either immunohistochemistry (IHC) or Western blot (WB) assay are generally adequate for the definitive diagnosis. Approved or accepted methods for WB diagnosis of TSEs requires the use of fresh or frozen nonfixed tissue samples, whereas formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue is required for the localization of PrPSc by IHC. Because disparate processing methods are used for these accepted diagnostic techniques, separate tissue samples are collected from the same animal. Occasions arise in which there is either insufficient quantity of tissue available to complete analysis by both techniques or initial tissue processing is incompatible with one of the assays. Also, results between the assays may differ because of the vagaries of sampling, especially in case material that contains moderate-to-low levels of PrPSc. The present article describes a method to conduct a WB assay from the same paraffin-embedded brainstem sample used for the IHC diagnosis of experimentally induced sheep scrapie.

Key Words: Paraffin-embedded tissue • prion • scrapie • sheep • transmissible spongiform encephalopathy • Western blot






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