Journal of General Virology

Fig. 6. Possible spread of scrapie infectivity from the gut lumen to the nervous system following oral infection (route indicated by dotted line). Soon after ingestion, PrP^Sc is detected readily within Peyer's patches upon FDCs, within macrophages, within cells with morphology consistent with that of M cells and within ganglia of the enteric nervous system (ENS). These observations suggest that following uptake of scrapie infectivity from the gut lumen infectivity accumulates upon FDCs in Peyer's patches and subsequently spreads via the ENS to the CNS. DC, Dendritic cell; FAE, follicle-associated epithelium.

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