Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: blood infectivity and screening tests.
Blood infectivity data from rodent models of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), and infectivity-prion protein (PrP) equivalence data from scrapie-infected hamster brain suggest a minimum requirement for PrP detection in blood buffy coat of < or = 10 pg/mL. This estimate could either be more or less stringent than calculated-more, if infectivity levels in human blood are lower than in experimental rodent models; less, if the infectivity-PrP ratio is lower in blood than in brain tissue, or if there is a large as yet undetected pool of abnormal but proteinase-sensitive PrP. None of several testing methods under development has yet achieved the calculated sensitivity requirement, but a few are within range, and it should be possible within the coming year to determine whether PrP occurs at a practically detectable level in the blood of patients with TSE.
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Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-4122, USA.
D000818:Animals; D007562:Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D007118:Immunoassay / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D018620:PrPSc Proteins / Q000097:blood; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014766:Viremia / Q000175:diagnosis
D018620:PrPSc Proteins