2012/03/13

Mad rabbit disease

- Our scientists have shown that rabbits, which were previously thought to be resistant to prion diseases, can also develop such infections.

- This research, led by Dr. Joaquín Castilla, has been published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and has resolved a mystery that has been studied for several decades.

- However, the authors of this study consider that an epidemic of mad rabbits similar to that seen in cows in the 1990s is highly unlikely.

(Bilbao, March 13th, 2012).- Rabbits have been considered to be resistant to prion disease for more than 40 years. This certainty was based on the experimental inoculations with prions from various sources to which this species was submitted, which proved to be negative. Furthermore, there is no evidence of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in these animals in Nature, and no prion diseases have been diagnosed in any of the rabbits from those zoos that used feed contaminated with the agent known to cause this disease in cows, which is able to infect the majority of species in captivity.

All these findings appeared to confirm an exception to the rule that essentially all mammals could develop an infectious and transmissible prion disease. In other words...