Amplification techniques and diagnosis of prion diseases.

Amplification techniques and diagnosis of prion diseases. Rev Neurol (Paris). 2019 Jul 08;: Authors: Brandel JP, Culeux A, Grznarova K, Levavasseur E, Lamy P, Privat N, Welaratne A, Denouel A, Laplanche JL, Haik S Abstract Protein misfolding cyclic amplification assay (PMCA) and real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) are two amplification techniques based on the ability of PrPsc to induce a conformational change in PrP allowing the detection of minute amounts of PrPsc in body fluids or tissues. PMCA and RT-QuIC have different ability to amplify PrPsc from sporadic, variant and genetic forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). PMCA readily amplifies PrPsc from variant CJD (vCJD) tissue while RT-QuIC easily amplifies PrPsc from sporadic CJD (sCJD) patient tissues. In terms of diagnosis, this implies the possibility of distinguishing vCJD from sCJD and explains the wider use of RT-QuIC given the respective frequencies of vCJD and sCJD. The sensitivity values of RT-QuIC for the diagnosis of sCJD are comparable or higher than those of the other tests (EEG, MRI, detection of 14-3-3 or tau proteins in cerebrospinal fluid) but with a specificity close to 100%. These new diagnostic methods could also be useful for the diagnosis of other neurodegenerative diseases. PMID: 31296398 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Revue Neurologique - Category: Neurology Tags: Rev Neurol (Paris) Source Type: research