“It could be useful for assessing individuals in high-risk areas,” Ances said.
Coauthor Dr. Claudio Soto of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston told Reuters Health that he was “surprised it worked so well because the amount of prion in urine is very tiny.”
He said there’s a good reason why it didn’t work with other types of Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
“These are completely different diseases, actually” because the prions involved with the mad cow form enter the body by eating and get into the blood, replicating in organs besides the brain, he said. “There’s much more involvement of peripheral organs in the body” so telltale signs in the urine are much more likely than in other forms of the illness.
Neither test is commercially available but laboratories would have the ability to do them, the researchers from both groups said.
Soto said he is hoping to eventually market the urine test, which is patented. (Reuters)[eap_ad_3]