The Generative Brain

Norwegian Veterinary Institute, prion and atypical scrapie group

The Norwegian Veterinary Institute is Norway's biomedical research institute and national centre of expertise in biosecurity for fish and land animals, headquartered at Ås, with 338 staff, and it gives research-based advice to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority. Its prion group has two firsts to its name. In 2003 it described five sheep scrapie cases found from 1998 onward with unusual features and named the new type Nor98, now known across Europe as atypical scrapie. In 2016 it reported the first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Europe, in a wild reindeer in southern Norway, and then the first CWD in moose and in a wild red deer. The World Organisation for Animal Health designated it as the third CWD reference laboratory worldwide and the first in Europe, announced in April 2018. It runs Norway's national scrapie and CWD surveillance laboratory work, testing about 18,800 sheep and 11,600 cervids in 2025. Its collaborations reach directly into human prion questions: it is a co-author institution on the 2014 Cassard paper on the zoonotic potential of scrapie, and its CWD isolates have been tested against human prion protein in mice and in vitro with the MRC Prion Unit and UTHealth Houston. Animal health side only. Information only, not medical or veterinary advice.

Key facts

  • The institute describes itself as a biomedical research institute and Norway's leading centre of expertise in biosecurity in fish and land animals, giving research-based advice to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority; it lists 338 employees, 168 of them with PhDs, about 100 research projects and 181,000 analysed samples.
  • Nor98 was named there. A 2003 Veterinary Record paper from the institute's pathology department in Oslo described five sheep scrapie cases diagnosed from 1998 onward, mainly with ataxia, in genotypes rarely linked to scrapie, with PrPSc in cerebellar and cerebral cortex but not at the obex or in lymphoid tissue and a western blot pattern unlike other scrapie strains and BSE, and warned that this type could be missed by standard surveillance sampling.
  • Norway has had no classical scrapie since 2009; five to fifteen Nor98 cases are found each year, and in 2025 the institute examined 18,801 sheep and 542 goats and found Nor98 in 13 sheep from 12 flocks. From 1981 to 2025 scrapie was diagnosed in 299 sheep flocks, 236 of them Nor98. The institute regards Nor98 as not transmissible between animals in the field.
  • The first European CWD case was a wild reindeer in southern Norway found in March 2016 and published in Veterinary Research on 15 September 2016 with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reference laboratory, APHA Weybridge and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
  • Moose and red deer followed: three CWD cases in 13 to 14 year old female moose with a new western blot type and no lymphoid involvement on standard tests (Emerging Infectious Diseases, December 2018), and the first wild red deer case in Europe (Journal of Wildlife Diseases, March 2019). The institute now describes reindeer CWD as contagious and moose and red deer CWD as sporadic.
  • The institute was designated by WOAH (then OIE) as a CWD reference laboratory, the third worldwide after Canada and South Korea and the first in Europe; the stated duties are confirming diagnoses for other countries, exchanging diagnostic and epidemiological knowledge and sharing diagnostic material. Papers from 2020 and 2022 carry the affiliation "OIE Reference Laboratory for CWD".
  • CWD surveillance covers moose, red deer, roe deer, reindeer and fallow deer; in 2025 it analysed 11,612 cervid samples and found three positive moose, all old females, with PrPSc only in brain by ELISA and western blot.
  • Strain work with partners shows Norwegian CWD differs from North American CWD: bank vole transmission with the Istituto Superiore di Sanita in 2020 found distinct strains in reindeer and moose and concluded North American CWD is not the direct source.
  • Human relevance studies with partners point in two directions. Mice expressing human PrP challenged with Norwegian reindeer and moose CWD at the MRC Prion Unit showed no transmission (2022), and PMCA indices with UTHealth Houston and Colorado State found North American CWD more able than Norwegian CWD to convert human PrP in vitro (2022); but a 2025 PMCA study found prions in lymphoid tissue and muscle of Norwegian moose, red deer and reindeer and raised the question of human dietary exposure.
  • The institute leads the Emerging CWD project (2023 to 2029, Research Council of Norway project 334585), which moved 13 genotyped female reindeer calves to Canadian biosafety facilities in Ottawa to study pathogenesis, shedding, spillover and zoonotic potential by PRNP genotype; the institute says CWD zoonotic potential has so far been assessed as very low. The funder record now reports early trial results, recorded in study-emerging-cwd-norway.
  • On atypical scrapie beyond Norway, the institute co-authored the 2010 report of eight Nor98 outbreaks in Basque Latxa sheep with NEIKER, and papers on Nor98 infectivity in peripheral tissues (2011), the similarity of Nor98 prions to human GSS and VPSPr (2013), and the emergence of classical BSE from Nor98 (2019 and 2025).
  • The University of Zaragoza prion centre lists the institute, as "Nasjonalt veterinaerinstitutt i Oslo", first among its international TSE collaborators.

Timeline

  1. 1998First sheep scrapie cases with the features later named Nor98 are diagnosed in Norway.
  2. 2003Veterinary Record paper designates the new scrapie type Nor98.
  3. 2009Last case of classical scrapie in Norway.
  4. 2010Joint report with NEIKER of eight atypical Nor98 scrapie outbreaks in Basque Latxa sheep.
  5. 2014Co-author institution on the Cassard et al. Nature Communications paper on zoonotic potential of ovine scrapie.
  6. 2016First CWD case in Europe found in a wild reindeer in southern Norway.
  7. 2016First European CWD case published in Veterinary Research.
  8. 2018Institute announces its designation as WOAH (OIE) reference laboratory for CWD, the first in Europe.
  9. 2018Report of a novel CWD type in three Norwegian moose.
  10. 2019First CWD in a wild red deer in Europe published.
  11. 2022MRC Prion Unit and institute report no transmission of Norwegian CWD to humanized mice.
  12. 2024Institute reports the start of the Emerging CWD reindeer trial in Canada, project 2023 to 2029.
  13. 2025Surveillance year with 11,612 cervid samples (3 positive moose) and 18,801 sheep (13 Nor98 positive).
  14. 2025Paper reports prions in muscle and lymphoid tissue of Norwegian CWD cervids.
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