ArticlebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology2025
The Impact of Formic Acid Treatment on Brain Tissues for Prion Inactivation.
Article in bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
- Updated by
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There are significant risks in clinical, diagnostic, and research settings to those who investigate prion diseases, due to the difficult nature of inactivating prion proteins with standard decontamination methods. Formic acid treatment has been shown to be effective for decontaminating infectious prions and commonly used in biosafety practice to prevent occupational exposure. However, the impact of formic acid protocols on the morphology of tissue samples has not been adequately documented. The goal of this study is to examine morphologic effects of formic acid treatment on central nervous system tissue, using mouse model brain hemisphere tissues that exhibit varying degrees of neurodegeneration as a model. This study included normal, non-diseased wild-type tissues and a 5xFAD model, which recapitulates aspects of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). A model exhibiting Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a prion disease of deer and elk, was also used to analyze the effects of formic acid on tissues with spongiform changes. Tissues from both formic acid and untreated control treatment groups were embedded in paraffin, sectioned, stained, and imaged microscopically. Anatomical regions were analyzed and evaluated quantitatively to determine the width, area, and structural integrity of the tissue between treatment groups. Our findings demonstrated that while formic acid has been previously reported to effectively inactivate prions, it compromised the morphology of mouse brain tissues. Furthermore, the effects of formic acid were not distributed equally between regions of the brain. Age did not play a role in the morphologic changes seen in the formic acid treatment group. Interestingly, the presence of neurodegeneration in the tissues did not appear to exacerbate the effects of morphological changes post-formic acid treatment. These results emphasize the need to explore alternative prion inactivation methods that ensure the safety and reliability of handling prion-infected tissues without compromising the integrity of tissues.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.