A Preliminary Study for the Determination of Prion Disease for Farm Animals in Ethiopia

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate prion and prion-like disease status of native Ethiopian farm animal. Material and Methods: In this study, descriptive study design was employed. A Semi-Structured interview was conducted to collect primary data from farmers who owned all or either cattle, sheep or goat and animal health extension of the provinces. Simple random sampling and purposive sampling were used to identify farmers who encountered the loss of more than three farm animals from their flock because of the same disease phenotype. Thus, 55 farmers and 6 animal health workers/experts who hold animal science or DVM degree were interviewed. Results: Of the total, 29 of the farmers experienced the loss of a significant number of animals at different times while 10 of them were not able to recall the incidence. All of the participated farmers claimed that there was no prion-like disease that killed dozens of their animals emerged in their areas. Despite the fact that the majority of farmers asked were not able to remember the exact sign and symptom of the disease that was the cause for the death of their animals, they were able to recall the most frequent phenotypes. According to animal health workers; foot and mouth disease (FMD), Lumpy skin disease (LSD) and sheep pox were the major outbreaks detected in the past few years. Conclusion: There were treated and untreated cases of animal diseases having similar clinical signs with that of prion diseases. Though this data has some limitations to conclude that prion disease never happened in the areas where the current study was conducted, it is possible to speculate that there was no epidemic of prion or prion-like disease yet.