4th Meeting: Working Group on International Reference Materials for Diagnosis and Study of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs)

Overview

The Fourth Meeting of the WHO Working Group on International Reference Materials for Diagnosis and Study of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (WHO TSE Working Group) was held at WHO in Geneva on 29-30 April 2002. The importance of suitable biological reference materials to improve the understanding and control of human TSEs was stressed. They reminded the TSE Working Group that biological reference materials are needed to assure that in vitro diagnostic tests and tests to detect infectious agents are robust enough and that—in spite of the unusual difficulty involved in working with TSE—tests for TSEs should be subjected to the same degree of critical scrutiny as are other tests.