Microsens creates CJD blood test

British diagnostics company Microsens has developed the first blood test that can detect abnormal proteins that cause the human version of “mad cow disease“, the company said yesterday.

The firm’s Seprion technology can detect abnormal prions, a type of protein, in the blood of patients with variant Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), it said.

Britain destroyed 3.7 million cattle in the 1980s and ’90s after an epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), dubbed “mad cow disease“.