New tests screen for lethal prion disease
Urine and nasal swabs can reveal silent carriers of infectious proteins
By Nsikan Akpan
New noninvasive tests can detect Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and may reveal hidden carriers of the lethal neurological disorder, scientists report in the Aug. 7 New England Journal of Medicine.
Current tests rely on imperfect brain scans or painful spinal taps to find signs of neuronal damage caused by the disease, but these methods miss up to 17 percent of cases. In contrast, the two new tests use urine or nasal swabs to directly confirm whether a person harbors the infectious prion proteins that cause the disorder, with 93 and 97 percent accuracy, respectively.