Heart rate variability analysis in sheep affected by transmissible spongiform encephalopathies

BMC Research Notes

Table 1 Details of sheep with recorded electrocardiograms

Group	Number of animals	Gender: female, castrated male	Age range in months: min-max (median)	Breeds
Scrapie-free controls¹	11	11, 0	33-58 (43.5)	Cheviot (5), Romney (3), Suffolk (3)
Scrapie²	18	17, 1	18-73 (51)	Romney (8), Suffolk (5), Charollais (1), Cheviot (1), Mule (1), Welsh Mountain (1),
BSE³	23	14, 9	21-54 (33)	Romney (11), Suffolk (8), Poll Dorset (3), Cheviot (1)
Inoculated with BSE/reported scrapie suspects, not confirmed⁴	6	5, 1	41-73 (46)	Romney (4), Suffolk (1), Welsh Mountain (1),

¹ Derived from a classical scrapie-free flock of New Zealand origin (N = 8 [13]) or from a UK classical scrapie-free Romney sheep flock (N = 3 [1]).
² Scrapie suspects reported by a farmer, inspected by a veterinary officer and transported live to VLA (N = 16), scrapie suspect from a research flock with high incidence of scrapie (N = 1 [14]) and a sheep intracerebrally inoculated with atypical scrapie (N = 1 [15]).
³ Sheep orally inoculated with classical BSE brain homogenate (N = 21) or naturally infected in a BSE research flock (N = 1), some of which were included in a previous study [16], and one sheep intracerebrally inoculated with L-type BSE brain (kindly provided by Dr Cristina Casalone IZS Turin, Italy).
⁴ Scrapie suspects reported by a farmer, inspected by a veterinary officer and transported live to VLA without disease confirmation (N = 3) and sheep orally inoculated with 0.5 g of BSE brain homogenate passaged through sheep (N = 3 [11]).

ISSN: 1756-0500