Accurate blood test for mad cow disease in humans developed

SCIENTISTS in Britain have developed the most accurate blood test yet for the human form of mad cow disease, but a more generally applicable screening test for a healthy population is still some way off.

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have developed a test prototype which is 100,000 times more sensitive than previous methods, capable of detecting tiny amounts of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)-causing particles, or “prions”, in human blood.

The British research team tested 190 blood samples, including 21 from people known to have vCJD.