PRNP and scrapie: Moreover, this methodology was readily improved and used for the detection of minute amounts of PrPSc in blood of pre-symptomatic animals, detecting it in scrapie-infected hamsters down to 20–50 molecules of misfolded PrP, with a maximum sensitivity of 60% and specificity of 100% in the pre-clinical phase (at 40 days post-inoculation) and reaching 80% sensitivity in the clinical stage (at 115 days post-inoculation) [243].