Follicular dendritic cells related to nerve fibres and cellular prion protein expression in ileal and jejunal Peyer’s patches of cows and calves

Prion pathogenesis following oral exposure is thought to involve gut-associated lymphoid tissue, which includes Peyer’s patches (PP). Before neuroinvasion, early accumulation of infectious prion protein (PrPsc) takes place on follicular dendritic cells (FDC) which are resident cells in germinal centres. The strain, the infection pathway and the lesions in the central nervous system are similar between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeldt Jakob diseases. But in BSE, the agent tropism differs from lymphoid organs. Only bovine ileal PP are infectious.

In order to study the replication and the possible ways of neuroinvasion of PrPsc in bovine PP, we studies the expression of cellular prion protein (PrPc), necessary for PrPsc accumulation, and compared the innervation of germinal centres related to FDC on ileal and jejunal PP of cows and calves. We performed classical immunoperoxydase staining and double immunofluorescence staining analyzed with a confocal microscopy. Differences in the innervation of germinal centres and expression of PrPc were evident. More contacts between FDC and nerve fibres are observed in calves PP. PrPc expression, carried out with different anti-PrPc antibodies, highlighted a heterogeneous labelling between calves and cows PP.

Such results permit us to show that the innervation of PP is a dynamic process which could influence the first way of neuroinvasion in prion diseases. Moreover differences in the affinity of some antibody for PrPc allow us to postulate that PrPc glycoforms differ with age of bovines and thus could interfere with PrPsc tropism.