No Prion Diseases Found in German Deer
News-Medical.Net
19 June 2006
Presently, There is no Evidence of Prion Diseases in Free-Living German Cervids.
This is the result of a study conducted by scientists of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. After six cases of scrapie in British moufflons, scientists will start a new study to test German moufflons for prion diseases.
The scientists examined more than 7,300 brain samples taken from cervids (roe deer, red deer and fallow deer) in nearly all districts of Germany. All of them tested negative for TSE. The abbreviation "TSE" stands for Transmissible Spongiform Enzephalopathies and summarizes a number of diseases which are caused by prions. The most well-known are the "mad-cow disease" BSE and scrapie, the latter afflicting sheep.
In the course of the BSE crisis in Great Britain, numerous cases of the human Creutzfeld Jacob Disease occurred. Thus, governments all over Europe are still concerned about food safety in connection with prion diseases. The German Ministry of Research and Education had funded the study on cervids, and now the Ministry for Agriculture is funding the new study on moufflons. Moufflons are wild sheep and thus susceptible to scrapie."In Great Britain, six cases in two separate flocks were documented ", says Kai Frolich of the IZW, who leads the TSE studies. This is one of the reasons for the moufflon study that will start in September.
A further reason: Germany is the country with the second-largest moufflon population world-wide with approximately 18,000 fre-living individuals. 6,000 of the wild sheep are shot annually, yielding approximately 125,000 kilograms meat.
Diamonds in the Data: Federal Agencies Increasingly Use Data Mining to Extract Valuable Info Buried in Large Databases
Federal Computer Weekly
19 June 2006
Aliya Sternstein
At this moment, public health officials are poring over terabytes of health care data to detect the first signs of a possible pandemic flu outbreak, bioterrorism attack or other contagion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a biosurveillance program in 2003, but advances in information exchange standards and concerns about pandemic flu have accelerated its national implementation.
The federal initiative, called BioSense, analyzes existing health care records, such as diagnoses, laboratory test results, physician visits and hospitalizations. The results help public health officials discover where an event is occurring and decide when to intervene with vaccines or quarantines.
The CDC works with regional hospital systems to create secure connections between their health care databases and the federal database. The data does not contain patient names, medical numbers or personal identifiers, CDC officials said.
H5 Avian Flu Virus Found in Canadian Poultry
Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy
19 June 2006
CIDRAP News – An H5 avian influenza virus was found in a dead gosling in a backyard flock in eastern Canada late last week, but authorities said today there is "no evidence" that the virus is the deadly H5N1 strain.
Meanwhile, Hungary was culling poultry following the recent confirmation of the country's first H5N1 outbreak in domestic birds, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced Jun 16 that a young goose on Prince Edward Island had tested positive for an H5 virus. The gosling was one of four birds that died in a flock of about 40, according to a Jun 18 Reuters report. Further testing was under way at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg, Man., the CFIA said.
"There is no evidence to suggest that we are dealing with the H5N1 strain currently in Asia and other countries," the CFIA said in an update today. "That virus is marked by very high mortality in birds, which was not observed in this particular situation."
If the virus turned out to be the deadly Asian strain of H5N1, this would mark its first appearance in North America. But mild H5 viruses have been found in Canadian poultry before. About 58,000 poultry were culled near Chilliwack, British Columbia, last November to stop an outbreak of a low-pathogenic H5 virus.
The CFIA destroyed the Prince Edward Island flock of 35 to 40 ducks, geese, and chickens Jun 16, the Reuters report said. In addition, the CFIA said today it had quarantined a farm next to the affected one and was testing the birds there.
"There has been no evidence of AI [avian influenza] in the birds on this second premises, but there has been regular movement of people and possibly animals between the two premises," the agency said.
A CFIA veterinarian named Jim Clark suggested that the four dead birds on the affected farm might have died of something other than avian flu. "There's no direct evidence that the influenza virus was the cause of the problem in the four birds that died," Clark told Reuters.
H5 and H7 viruses can have either high or low pathogenicity. Low-pathogenic forms circulating in poultry can mutate into high-pathogenic strains.
Scientist Working on CWD Test for Live Animals
The Associated Press Posted by GrandForksHerald.com
19 June 2006
Dirk Lammers
BROOKINGS, S.D. - A South Dakota State University scientist is doing research that could lead to a live animal test for chronic wasting disease.
The fatal illness, for which there is no known cure, attacks the central nervous system of deer and elk, causing the infected animals to waste away.
Alan Young, associate professor of veterinary science, said developing a culture system for CWD could lead to an early stage diagnosis. Current tests can only be done on dead animals' brains.
"As far as progress goes, we're still a few years away from an actual diagnostic assay," he said.
Young's research is part of a joint effort between the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Vaccinology and the private research company Rural Technologies Inc.
It focuses on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs, a group of diseases caused by abnormal levels of complex proteins called prions.
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