HUMAN KURU Infection through ritualistic cannibalism Iatrogenic Creutzfeld Jacob (iCJD) Infection from prion-contaminated HGH, dura mater grafts,etc. Variant CJD (vCJD) Infection from bovine prions? Familial CJD Germline mutations in PrP gene Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Germline mutations in PrP gene Disease Fatal Familial Insominia Germline mutations in PrP gene (D178N and M129) Sporadic CJ...

BACKGROUND Human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) results from foodborne transmission of prions from slaughtered cattle with classical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (cBSE). Atypical forms of BSE, which remain mostly asymptomatic in aging cattle, were recently identified at slaughterhouses throughout Europe and North America, raising a question about human susceptibility to these new ...

The use of the pulse oximeter to estimate oxygen saturation has revolutionized monitoring capabilities in medicine. However, there can be circumstances in which there is a discordance between oxygen saturation measurements via pulse oximeter (SpO2) and actual arterial oxygen levels (PaO2). In these situations, there is a possibility the patient could have a variant hemoglobin as the etiology of...

Infection of mice with an attenuated Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease agent (SY-CJD) interferes with superinfection by a more virulent human-derived CJD agent (FU-CJD) and does not require pathological prion protein (PrPres). Using a rapid coculture system, we found that a neural cell line free of immune system cells similarly supported substantial CJD agent interference without PrPres. In addition, S...

Precision medicine trials and targeted therapies have shifted to the forefront of oncology. Although targeted therapies have shown initial promise, implementation across the broad landscape of oncology has many challenges. These limitations include an incomplete understanding of the functional significance of variant alleles as well as the need for clinical research and practice models that are...

These are lecture notes on the rigidity of submanifolds of projective space “resembling” compact Hermitian symmetric spaces in their homogeneous embeddings. The results of [16, 20, 29, 18, 19, 10, 31] are surveyed, along with their classical predecessors. The notes include an introduction to moving frames in projective geometry, an exposition of the Hwang-Yamaguchi ridgidity theorem and a new v...

Studies to identify common genetic variants contributing to breast cancer risk often yield inconsistent results. Breast cancer is a complex disease involving both genetic and environmental determinants. Dietary isoflavones are thought to reduce breast cancer risk by stimulating circulating sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) levels. The SHBG gene contains a D356N polymorphism and the N variant ...

While the neuropathology of kuru is well defined, there are few data concerning the distribution of disease-related prion protein in peripheral tissues. Here we report the investigation of brain and peripheral tissues from a kuru patient who died in 2003. Neuropathological findings were compared with those seen in classical (sporadic and iatrogenic) Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and variant C...

BACKGROUND In 1998, following the detection of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in the UK, Belgium installed a surveillance system for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). The objectives of this system were to identify vCJD cases and detect increases in CJD incidence. Diagnostic confirmation of CJD is based on autopsy after referral by neurologists. Reference centres perform autopsies and r...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cholinesterases are found histochemically in the vessels affected with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). A gene for the K variant of butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE-K) may be associated with late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). In search of genetic risk factors for CAA, we investigated the association of BCHE-K with CAA. METHODS The association between the severity of CAA ...