SUNDAY, Sept. 7 (HealthDayNews) -- A faster, more accurate test for mad cow disease has been developed by researchers at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF).

The researchers say their test, which has undergone animal studies, may even be able to detect the disease in living cows.

Current tests can only detect mad cow disease in dead cattle. Some critics say current testing for the infectious prion proteins that cause mad cow disease are inadequate for large-scale screening, may take a week to provide results and can produce false readings.

This new test, the conformation-dependent immunoassay (CDI) can detect prion proteins with perfect accuracy at much smaller levels than conventional tests. The new test takes only about five hours to provide results, the UCSF researchers add.

They presented their research Sunday at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New York City.

Like current tests, this new method detects prions in the brain tissue of dead cows. But it also shows promise in being able to detect the prion proteins in the muscle tissue and even blood of living animals.

If that proves to be the case, the new test could be used to identify infected animals before they show any symptoms of mad cow disease. That may prevent the need to slaughter whole herds of cattle when just one animal has mad cow disease.

This new test was used in a field trial to check for signs of mad cow disease in the brains of 11,000 slaughtered cows in Europe. The results were compared to those from standard tests done on the same animals. The new test recorded a perfect score, with no false positives or negatives.

More information

Here's where you can learn more about mad cow disease.