Transmissible mink encephalopathy TME

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are a group of rare, fatal, and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases, which, in addition to scrapie and BSE, include chronic wasting disease (CWD) in mule deer (Williams and Young, 1980) and elk (Williams and Young, 1982), and transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME) (Marsh and Kimberlin,... 

Up through 1980, people thought that all infectious diseases were caused by microbes of some sort. They knew about diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, protozoa, and fungi. There were some strange diseases, however, for which no one had isolated and cultured the pathogen. Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans, scrapie in sheep, and transmissible encephalopathy in mink (TME) all involved a slow, gradual loss of mental function and eventual death. The brains of the victims all showed unusual plaques of amyloid protein surrounded by spongelike tissue. 

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