Relationship between clinical signs and postmortem test status in cattle experimentally infected with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent

Table 4 Relative frequency of clinical signs expressed at the last three observation periods prior to cull compared to control cattle

Study	1	1	2
Groups	1 g & 100 g	1 g	4
Postmortem BSE diagnosis	Pos	Neg	Pos
*Behaviour*
Apprehension	↑↑↑		↑↑
Unusual asymmetrical ear movements	↑↑↑		↑
Grooming self	↑		↑↑
Nose licking	↑
Snorting	↑
Sneezing	↑
Head toss			↑
*Sensation*
Hyperaesthesia	↑↑↑	↑	↑
Abnormal hand approach/clipboard test	↑↑↑		↑
Startle at movement	↑↑↑
Startle at movement incl. hand approach/clipboard test	↑↑↑	↑	↑
Startle at noise	↑
*Posture*
Abnormal head carriage		↑

Groups were compared with undosed controls (study 1) or saline-inoculated controls (study 2). The BSE-positive animals dosed with 1 g and 100 g in study 1 were combined to increase the sample size.
An arrow (↑) indicates that the sign or sign combination is more frequent than in control cattle, with P<0.001 (↑↑↑), P = 0.001-0.01 (↑↑) and P>0.01 and <0.05 (↑). Blank cell: not significant (P>0.05) or no P-value given because of absence of this sign in both groups.
Only signs that were significantly differently displayed compared to controls are listed. Not shown are the comparisons of signs between controls and BSE-negative cattle dosed with 100 g of BSE brainstem (study 1) and between controls and BSE-negative cattle in groups 2 and 3 (study 2) because there was no significant difference for any of the signs.

ISSN: 1746-6148