[2] The "quaking" in the name of the technique refers to the fact that samples in the RT-QuIC assay are literally subjected to shaking.
It can sample multiple sample types, such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), brain, lymph nodes, blood, muscle, and skin, and so it is applicable to scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cows and sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans, amongst others.
[5] The RT-QuIC assay uses in excess recombinantly produced normally folded prions, often a truncated Syrian Hamster protein, amino acids 90-231.
[6][7][8] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes a positive RT-QuIC result in its diagnostic criteria for the probable diagnosis of sCJD.
For example, blood samples tend to have low levels of circulating intracellular prions and have inhibitors of the assay.