[Transmissible subacute spongiform encephalopathies in animals].

Transmissible subacute spongiform encephalopathies are a group of neurodegenerative diseases of man and of several species of domestic mammals. Scrapie has been recognised in sheep and goats for more than 250 years. Descriptions in 1986 of the first cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in United Kingdom, its expansion with an enzootic pattern, and in 1996 of a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, probably related to the same agent, focused the attention of scientists, medias and public on what seems to be a new zoonosis. The biopathological study of BSE and scrapie is useful for evaluating what risk these animal diseases represent for human health.