Passage: At the time, government scientists had studied the brains of 444 hunting hounds that had died after showing signs of distress associated with BSE, and found abnormalities called fibrils, tiny fibres first noticed by scientists studying scrapie, a spongiform encephalopathy in sheep. The presence of fibrils, said the scientists, confirmed that some of the brains showed signs of a canine equivalent of mad cow disease.
encephalopathy