Quickening the Diagnosis of Mad Cow Disease

Europeans have destroyed 4.5 million cows since 1996, the height of the epidemic in the United Kingdom, because they were believed to be at risk for mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE).1 Necropsies, however, showed that only a few hundred thousand of them actually were infected.2 Had a diagnostic test for mad cow disease existed when this epidemic erupted, these numbers might have been different. But no such test did exist. The only available assay was a bioassay in which

Written byLaura Defrancesco

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Now basic research on prions, the infectious proteinaceous particles that cause mad cow disease and other cases of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSEs), has caught up with the disease. The latest batch of assays validated for use by the European Commission cuts the time down from months to hours. And even faster, more sensitive tests, including one that purports to detect single prion aggregates,³ are on the horizon. Millions of tests for the BSE prion have now been sold throughout Europe, and as a result, wholesale slaughter of herds is no longer taking place. Instead, animals en route to slaughter for food use are tested for BSE prior to their entering the food chain--testing up to 100 percent of feed animals in Germany, for example.

Prions are found throughout virtually all species, and for the most part are innocuous. However, certain events, such as a mutation or exposure to infected material, ...

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