Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle mimics ultrastructurally experimental scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in rodents.

We report a comparison of the ultrastructural pathology of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, experimental scrapie in hamsters and a panencephalopathic model of Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in mice. Vacuoles in dendrites, intramyelinic vacuoles (myelin ballooning), dystrophic axons, phagocytic astrocytes and macrophages, differing in extent, were found in all three models. We conclude, that this axonal and myelin pathology is a phenomenon common to the three models of SSVE studied, and the differences between panencephalophatic CJD and polioencephalopathic BSE and scrapie are only quantitative.