An Improved Test for Mad Cow Disease

Researchers have developed a new test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, that they say is faster and more reliable for identifying the disease than current tests, which can only detect the disease after the cow dies. The test was described at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in New York (NY, USA).

Called a conformation-dependent immunoassay (CDI), the automated test can detect prion proteins with 100% accuracy at much smaller levels than conventional tests and takes only about five hours to produce results. Although designed for detecting prions in the brain tissue of cows only upon autopsy, the test also shows promise for detecting prions in muscle tissue and even blood while a cow is still alive. In a field trial, the test was used to check for signs of the disease in the brains of 11,000 slaughtered cows. The results were the same as those of standard immunoassays performed on the same animals.

"This represents a new generation of prion tests,” said project leader Dr. Jiri G. Safar, M.D., an associate adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco (USA). "It is the most promising to date for accurately detecting prion proteins.” The group plans to use the test on an even larger scale among European cattle herds within the next year. The test can detect up to eight different strains of prions, including those that cause scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease in deer.




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