[Methods for diagnosis of prion diseases]

The epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United Kingdom, its related occurrence of a new type of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease and proven cases of this type of the disease transmitted by blood transfusion initiated intensive studies to develop a inexpensive, prompt, and sensitive method for the early lifetime diagnosis of prion diseases. This would permit initiation of the timely treatment of the patients and prevention of contamination of foodstuffs. However, despite significant progress made in this direction, this objective has not yet been achieved. The present review highlights the currently available methods for the diagnosis of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, as well as the latest developments in the ultrasensitive detection of these diseases, which is based on the misfolded prion protein complex.