Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a naturally occurring infectious, fatal, transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of cervids. Currently, disease confirmation relies on post-mortem detection of infectious prions in the medial retropharyngeal lymph nodes or obex in the brain via immunohistochemistry (IHC). Detection of CWD in living animals using this method is impractical, and IHC and other experimental assays are not reliable in detecting low concentrations of prion present in biofluids or faeces. Here, we evaluate the capability of faecal volatile organic compound analysis to discriminate between CWD-positive and -exposed white-tailed deer located at two positive cervid farms, and two groups of CWD-negative deer from two separate disease-free farms.

慢性消耗性疾病（CWD）是鹿科动物自然发生的传染性、致命性、传染性海绵状脑病。目前，疾病的确认依赖于通过免疫组织化学（IHC）对咽后内侧淋巴结或大脑中的感染性朊病毒进行尸检检测。使用这种方法检测活体动物中的 CWD 是不切实际的，并且 IHC 和其他实验测定法在检测生物体液或粪便中存在的低浓度朊病毒方面并不可靠。在这里，我们评估了粪便挥发性有机化合物分析区分位于两个阳性鹿场的 CWD 阳性和暴露的白尾鹿以及来自两个独立无病农场的两组 CWD 阴性鹿的能力。