PMCA screening of retropharyngeal lymph nodes in white-tailed deer and comparisons with ELISA and IHC

Abstract Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease affecting cervids. CWD diagnosis is conducted through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) in retropharyngeal lymph nodes. Unfortunately, these techniques have limited sensitivity against the biomarker (CWD-prions). Two in vitro prion amplification techniques, real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) and protein misfolding cyclic amplification (PMCA), have shown promise in detecting CWD-prions in tissues and bodily fluids. Recent studies have demonstrated that RT-QuIC yields similar results compared to ELISA and IHC. Here, we analyzed 1003 retropharyngeal lymph nodes (RPLNs) from Texas white-tailed deer. PMCA detected CWD at a higher rate compared to ELISA/IHC, identified different prion strains, and revealed the presence of CWD-prions in places with no previous history. These findings suggest that PMCA exhibits greater sensitivity than current standard techniques and could be valuable for rapid and strain-specific CWD detection.