{"doi":"10.1038/s41598-021-87295-8","title":"Detection of chronic wasting disease in mule and white-tailed deer by RT-QuIC analysis of outer ear","abstract":"Efforts to contain the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal, contagious prion disease of cervids, would be aided by the availability of additional diagnostic tools. RT-QuIC assays allow ultrasensitive detection of prion seeds in a wide variety of cervid tissues, fluids and excreta. The best documented antemortem diagnostic test involving RT-QuIC analysis targets lymphoid tissue in rectal biopsies. Here we have tested a more easily accessed specimen, ear pinna punches, using an improved RT-QuIC assay involving iron oxide magnetic extraction to detect CWD infections in asymptomatic mule and white-tailed deer. Comparison of multiple parts of the ear pinna indicated that a central punch spanning the auricular nerve provided the most consistent detection of CWD infection. When compared to results obtained from gold-standard retropharyngeal lymph node specimens, our RT-QuIC analyses of ear samples provided apparent diagnostic sensitivity (81%) and specificity (91%) that rivaled, or improved upon, those observed in previous analyses of rectal biopsies using RT-QuIC. These results provide evidence that RT-QuIC analysis of ear pinna punches may be a useful approach to detecting CWD infections in cervids.","journal":"Scientific Reports","year":2021,"id":162872,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":44,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9603,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":680721,"name":"Jorge M. Charco","orcid":"0000-0003-3476-1855","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":681310,"name":"Jakob Plagenz","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227553,"name":"Christina D. Orrú","orcid":"0000-0001-7253-2944","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":681311,"name":"Nathanial D. Denkers","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":268825,"name":"Michael A. Metrick","orcid":"0000-0002-9998-4630","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227556,"name":"Andrew G. Hughson","orcid":"0000-0002-0725-4017","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":680722,"name":"Karen A. Griffin","orcid":"0000-0002-9605-8973","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307599,"name":"Brent Race","orcid":"0000-0002-5334-1023","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":293697,"name":"Edward A. Hoover","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":680723,"name":"Joaquı́n Castilla","orcid":"0000-0002-2216-1361","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":401751,"name":"Tracy A. Nichols","orcid":"0000-0002-3337-9462","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":642231,"name":"Michael W. Miller","orcid":"0000-0002-3397-6451","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227561,"name":"Byron Caughey","orcid":"0000-0002-3928-6101","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":268826,"name":"Natalia Ferreira","orcid":"0000-0002-5381-6666","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":32,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:45:05.641178Z","pmid":"33833330","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}