Open AccessDetection of prions in skin punch biopsies of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease patients
Author(s) -
Mammana Angela,
Baiardi Simone,
Rossi Marcello,
Franceschini Alessia,
Donadio Vincenzo,
Capellari Sabina,
Caughey Byron,
Parchi Piero
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
annals of clinical and translational neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.824
H-Index - 42
ISSN - 2328-9503
DOI - 10.1002/acn3.51000
Subject(s) - medicine , skin biopsy , prion protein , pathological , pathology , disease , strain (injury) , biopsy , virology
Prion real‐time quaking‐induced conversion (RT‐QuIC) is an ultrasensitive assay detecting pathological aggregates of misfolded prion protein in biospecimens. We studied 71 punch biopsy skin samples of 35 patients with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), including five assessed in vitam. The results confirmed the high value of skin prion RT‐QuIC for CJD diagnosis (89% sensitivity and 100% specificity) and support its use in clinical practice. Preliminary data based on a limited number of cases suggest that prion‐seeding activity in the skin varies according to the prion strain, being higher in sporadic CJD subtypes linked to the V2 strain (VV2 and MV2K) than in typical CJDMM1.