RESUMO
Important changes have occurred in the post-mortem diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in recent years. We have evaluated a commercially available Western blot method (TeSeE Wb) as a potential means of confirming BSE. This method was (i) highly sensitive, compared with a biochemical confirmatory Western blot method (AFSSA-Wb) previously used in France and (ii) more sensitive than two routinely used highly sensitive rapid tests (TeSeE ELISA, HerdCheck BSE). We show that this high sensitivity is mainly due to the antibody used (Sha31). Interestingly, TeSeE Wb was also able to diagnose the two currently recognised deviant BSE phenotypes (H-type and L-type or BASE). The initially described molecular features of these atypical forms of BSE were also readily recognised, although sensitivity of the method may be differently affected by the chosen Ab compared with typical BSE. This method is thus of potential interest for future evaluations of BSE confirmatory methods.