Evidence that transmissible mink encephalopathy agent is biologically inactive in mice

Transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME) is probably a form of the sheep disease, scrapie, introduced by accidentally feeding mink with scrapie-infected sheep tissues. Although no successful transmissions of TME to mice have been achieved previous work has involved various limitations. To maximize the possibility of transmission, 176 mice, representing 14 different genotypes mostly not previously tested with TME, were injected with TME-infected mink brain from three sources with different histories. No scrapie-like disease was detected clinically or histologically in these mice or in a further 111 which were subsequently injected with brain or spleen material from 10 of the TME-injected mice killed when senile. Furthermore, a series of experiments involving seven strains of scrapie, demonstrated that prior injection of mice with TME failed to affect the normal progress of scrapie infection indicating that TME agent had not occupied scrapie replication sites or otherwise influenced the pathogenesis of scrapie. The overall conclusion from these experiments is that TME is biologically inactive in mice. Although many strains of natural scrapie can be transmitted to laboratory mice, this has not been possible with all strains and it is concluded that one or more of such strains is likely to be the cause of TME in mink.