Patent ID: 7368243

Claim:
A method of detecting an animal at increased risk for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the method comprising: incubating nucleic acids extracted from an acellular sample obtained from the animal with amplification primers in a test amplification reaction; wherein the amplification primers comprise: (i) at least 10 contiguous nucleotides of CHX-1F (SEQ ID NO:1) and CHX-1R (SEQ ID NO:2) or (ii) CHX-1F (SEQ ID NO:1) and CHX-1R (SEQ ID NO:2) or (iii) 63R (SEQ ID NO: 11) and 55F (SEQ ID NO: 3); or 60F (SEQ ID NO: 5) and 55R (SEQ ID NO: 4); detecting reactivity of the amplification reaction that is over 5 standard deviations from a reference amplification reaction, wherein reactivity of over 5 is indicative of an increased risk for BSE, wherein reactivity of the amplification reaction is determined using a melting curve.