ABSTRACT
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) have been highlighted during the past years by the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epizooty in Great Britain and appearance of BSE cases in many European countries. These diseases, previously known in enzootic or sporadic forms with natural scrapie in sheep or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, are now considered a major public health problem, since the BSE agent has been shown to be able to contaminate humans with the onset of variant of CJD (vCJD). Since no therapeutic or medical prophylactic measures are currently available against prion diseases, only active or passive prophylactic measures can be performed to avoid new contamination from animal to human or from human to human. In this context, sensitive diagnostic tools are of crucial interest for epidemiological and/or systematic screening to increase food and public health safety.
