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A BSE blood Test for Cattle

Will a new blood test for BSE also lead to a test for the human form, CJD?

New blood test for Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) detects the disease before symptoms develop but it still depends on when the animal was infected; will a test for the human form, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), follow? A single gene – APP – may be involved in the dementia associated with some cases of Down's Syndrome and in Alzheimer's disease. Plus, how to count all the microbes in the sea, and can computers be too clever?

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26 minutes

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service Archive

This programme was restored as part of the World Service archive project

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