Faster, More Reliable Test Developed for Mad Cow Disease
From Times staff and wire reports
UC San Francisco researchers have developed a faster, more reliable and more sensitive way to test for mad cow disease, allowing more efficient safety screening of blood, medicines and other products derived from cattle. Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner developed mice engineered to be sensitive to the illness, which turns the brains of cows to spongy tissue.
When the mice are infected with prions, they show symptoms within 120 days, compared to the three to five years required in cattle, the team reported in Tuesday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
