Patients with iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease due to administration of cadaver-sourced growth hormone during childhood are still being seen in the UK 30 years after cessation of this treatment. Of the 77 patients who have developed iatrogenic CreutzfeldtJakob disease, 56 have been genotyped. There has been a marked change in genotype profile at polymorphic codon 129 of the prion protein ge...

It is now accepted that the structural transition from cellular prion protein (PrPC) to proteinase K-resistant prion protein scrapie (PrPSc) is the major event leading to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Although the mechanism of this transition remains elusive, glycosylation has been proposed to impede the PrPC to PrPSc conversion. To address the role of glycosylation, we have prepar...

Transmissive spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) are neurodegenerative diseases characterized by depositions of abnormally folded prion protein (PrP(TSE)) in brain. PrP(TSE) is at present the only specific biochemical marker of human and animal TSE. As deposits of PrP(TSE) remain in the body for long periods, there is substantial chance of them being nonenzymatically modified by glycation. The de...

BACKGROUND Prospective national screening and surveillance programmes serve a range of public health functions. Objectively determining their adequacy and impact on disease may be problematic for rare disorders. We undertook to assess whether objective measures of disease surveillance intensity could be developed for the rare disorder sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and whether such me...

Human prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders associated with an accumulation of PrP(Sc) in the central nervous system (CNS). Of the human prion diseases, sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), which has no known origin, is the most common form while variant CJD (vCJD) is an acquired human prion disease reported to differ from other human prion diseases in its neurological, neu...

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are a group of fatal neurodegenerative diseases with long incubation time. This group includes Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, kuru, scrapie, chronic wasting disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Sensitive and specific detection of abnormal prion protein as "a source agent" of the above-mentioned diseases in blood could provide a diagnostic test or a...