Autoantibodies to brain components and antibodies to Acinetobacter calcoaceticus are present in bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a neurological disorder, predomin antly of British cattle, which belongs to the group of transmissible spongi form encephalopathies together with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), kuru, and scrapie, Autoantibodies to brain neurofilaments have been previously de scribed in patients with CJD and kuru and in sheep affected by scrapie, Spo ngiform-like changes have also been observed in chronic experimental allerg ic encephalomyelitis, at least in rabbits and guinea pigs, and in these con ditions autoantibodies to myelin occur, We report here that animals with BS E have elevated levels of immunoglobulin A autoantibodies to brain componen ts, i.e., neurofilaments (P < 0.001) and myelin (P < 0.001), as well as to Acinetobacter calcoaceticus (P < 0.001), saprophytic microbes found in soil which have sequences cross-reacting with bovine neurofilaments and myelin, but there mere no antibody elevations against Agrobacterium tumefaciens or Escherichia coli. The relevance of such mucosal autoantibodies or antibact erial antibodies to the pathology of BSE and its possible link to prions re quires further evaluation.