Chronic wasting disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that targets cervids, has become a significant threat to both free-ranging and captive populations of Canadian white-tailed deer. In an effort to mitigate its spread, research in the past 20 years has demonstrated that the genetic background of deer may influence the pathogenesis of CWD. Specifically, variants located on the 95-, 96-, 116- and 226-codon of the prion protein gene seem to attenuate disease progression in white-tailed deer. The …

Real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assays have become a common tool to detect chronic wasting disease (CWD) and are very sensitive provided the assay duration is sufficient. However, a prolonged assay duration may lead to non-specific signal amplification. The wide range of pre-defined assay durations in current RT-QuIC applications presents a need for methods to optimize the RT-QuIC assay. In this study, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied to optimize the assay duration for CW…