Filtration of Protein Aggregates Increases the Accuracy for Diagnosing Prion Diseases in Brain Biopsies

In brain biopsies taken from patients with rapidly progressive dementia, the first differential diagnoses to be ruled out are prion diseases. For safe diagnostic processing of tissue and instruments, a rapid, highly sensitive, and specific analysis for prion aggregates is necessary. Here, we examined 16 brain biopsies and brain samples (frontal cortex and cerebellum) from 65 autopsies by Western blot, paraffin-embedded tissue (PET) blot, immunohistochemistry, and the recently described membrane adsorption assay (MAA) for their suitability to detect pathologic prion protein. In our hands, the PET blot method provided the highest sensitivity in prion detection (biopsies, 100%; all autopsy sections, 96.3%), closely followed by the MAA (biopsies, 100%; all autopsy samples, 96%) and Western blot analysis (biopsies, 100%; all autopsy samples, 92%). Conventional immunohistochemistry is the least sensitive method (biopsies, 50%; all autopsy sections, 80%) and also gave 1 false-positive biopsy result. Consequently, our standard diagnostic protocol is to use the MAA as a first step for detecting or excluding a prion disease, followed by the PET blot for the prion deposition pattern, Western blotting for prion typing, and immunohistochemistry for differential diagnoses. With this standard and the availability of unfixed tissue, a diagnosis was possible in all 16 biopsies examined.