White-tailed deer are susceptible to scrapie (WTD scrapie) after oronasal inoculation with the classical scrapie agent from sheep. Deer affected by WTD scrapie are difficult to differentiate from deer infected with chronic wasting disease (CWD). To assess the transmissibility of the WTD scrapie agent and tissue phenotypes when further passaged in white-tailed deer, we oronasally inoculated wild-type white-tailed deer with WTD scrapie agent. We found that WTD scrapie and CWD agents were generally similar, although some differences were noted. The greatest differences were seen in bioassays of cervidized mice that exhibited significantly longer survival periods when inoculated with WTD scrapie agent than those inoculated with CWD agent. Our findings establish that white-tailed deer are susceptible to WTD scrapie and that the presence of WTD scrapie agent in the lymphoreticular system suggests the handling of suspected cases should be consistent with current CWD guidelines because environmental shedding may occur.

白尾鹿经口鼻接种来自绵羊的经典瘙痒病制剂后，容易感染瘙痒病（WTD 瘙痒病）。受 WTD 痒病感染的鹿与感染慢性消耗性疾病 (CWD) 的鹿很难区分。为了评估WTD痒病剂的传播性和在白尾鹿中进一步传代时的组织表型，我们用WTD痒病剂经口鼻接种野生型白尾鹿。我们发现 WTD 痒病和 CWD 药物总体相似，但也注意到一些差异。最大的差异出现在接种 WTD 瘙痒病剂的宫颈小鼠的生物测定中，与接种 CWD 剂的小鼠相比，接种 WTD 痒病剂的小鼠表现出显着更长的存活期。我们的研究结果表明，白尾鹿易感染 WTD 瘙痒病，并且淋巴网状系统中存在 WTD 瘙痒病病原体，这表明对疑似病例的处理应符合现行的 CWD 指南，因为可能会发生环境脱落。