Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), report that they have developed a method—10,000

Because animals and people can be infected for years before symptoms of disease appear, scientists have tried to develop a rapid and sensitive screening tool to detect prion diseases in blood, which would assist in efforts to prevent the spread of prion diseases among and between species, via the blood supply or otherwise.
Collaborating with scientists from Switzerland-based Prionics AG, the NIAID group combined an antibody-based approach with an improved real-time quaking-induced protein conversion (RT-QuIC) reaction. RT-QuIC, developed in recent years, detects when normal prion protein converts to an abnormal form (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/Pages/prionCaughey.aspx). The resulting test—which they call enhanced QuIC (eQuIC)—improves prospects for routinely detecting low levels of abnormal prions in tissues, fluids or environmental samples such as soil. The group plans to study eQuIC as a potential tool to diagnose various prion diseases in different animals.
Source-Eurekalert