To: BSE-L@uni-karlsruhe.de
Nature 426, 216 (20 November 2003); doi:10.1038/426216b
Academy calls for improved tests to beat prion disease
JONATHAN KNIGHT
[SAN FRANCISCO] Diagnostic tests for prion diseases need a "quantum
leap" in sensitivity if they are to help prevent future outbreaks, says
a report from the US National Academy of Sciences.
Basic research into the nature of prions, which cause illnesses such as
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or mad cow disease), will be essential
to achieve this, says the report. It was commissioned by the Department
of Defense and prepared by a panel chaired by Richard Johnson, professor
of neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in
Baltimore, Maryland.
"We need a fundamentally different approach," says Johnson. "Incremental
improvements in existing tests are not going to do it." Prion diseases,
or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), can only be
confirmed after death and even then can be missed. A test is needed that
can spot the smallest amount of infectious prion protein that can cause
disease, the report says. This would require a sensitivity at least
1,000 times greater than that of current tests.
One possible approach would be to work out the three-dimensional
structure of the prion protein, so that a compound could be designed to
target it. This has been complicated by the insolubility of prion proteins.
Fred Cohen, a prion researcher at the University of California, San
Francisco, welcomes the report. "It was a good group of people to probe
these questions," he says. Although there has been an epidemic of TSE
among elk and deer in the Midwest, there is no mad cow disease in the
United States, and Cohen doubts whether the political will exists to
fund the work.
Congress handed a major role in prion research to the defence department
last year, when it authorized the National Prion Research Program. This
distributed US$42 million in research grants in 2002 and may win further
funds in 2004. Part of the military's interest concerns its troops
abroad, who may have been exposed to mad cow disease. Prion diseases are
also a potential bioterror agent.
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