Friday, October 05, 2012

Differential Diagnosis of Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease

Original Contribution| ONLINE FIRST



Differential Diagnosis of Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease



Ross W. Paterson, MRCP; Charles C. Torres-Chae, MPA; Amy L. Kuo, MS, RN, GNP; Tim Ando, BA; Elizabeth A. Nguyen, BS; Katherine Wong, BS; Stephen J. DeArmond, MD, PhD; Aissa Haman, MD; Paul Garcia, MD; David Y. Johnson; Bruce L. Miller, MD; Michael D. Geschwind, MD, PhD Arch Neurol. 2012;():1-5. doi:10.1001/archneurol.2013.79. Text Size: AA A Published online September 24, 2012 ABSTRACT



ABSTRACT | METHODS | RESULTS | COMMENT | AUTHOR INFORMATION | REFERENCES



Objectives To identify the misdiagnoses of patients with sporadic Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease (sCJD) during the course of their disease and determine which medical specialties saw patients with sCJD prior to the correct diagnosis being made and at what point in the disease course a correct diagnosis was made.



Design Retrospective medical record review.



Setting A specialty referral center of a tertiary academic medical center.



Participants One hundred sixty-three serial patients over a 5.5-year period who ultimately had pathologically proven sCJD. The study used the subset of 97 patients for whom we had adequate medical records.



Main Outcome Measures Other diagnoses considered in the differential diagnosis and types of medical specialties assessing patients with sCJD.



Results Ninety-seven subjects' records were used in the final analysis. The most common disease categories of misdiagnosis were neurodegenerative, autoimmune/paraneoplastic, infectious, and toxic/metabolic disorders. The most common individual misdiagnoses were viral encephalitis, paraneoplastic disorder, depression, vertigo, Alzheimer disease, stroke, unspecified dementia, central nervous system vasculitis, peripheral neuropathy, and Hashimoto encephalopathy. The physicians who most commonly made these misdiagnoses were primary care physicians and neurologists; in the 18% of patients who were diagnosed correctly at their first assessment, the diagnosis was almost always by a neurologist. The mean time from onset to diagnosis was 7.9 months, an average of two-thirds of the way through their disease course.



Conclusions Diagnosis of sCJD is quite delayed. When evaluating patients with rapidly progressive dementia with suspected neurodegenerative, autoimmune, infectious, or toxic/metabolic etiology, sCJD should also be included in the differential diagnosis, and appropriate diagnostic tests, such as diffusion brain magnetic resonance imaging, should be considered. Primary care physicians and neurologists need improved training in sCJD diagnosis.









Wednesday, June 27, 2012



First US BSE Case Since 2006 Underscores Need for Vigilance



Neurology Today 21 June 2012








PO-028: Oral transmission of L-type bovine spongiform encephalopathy (L-BSE) in primate model Microcebus murinus



Nadine Mestre-Frances,1 Simon Nicot,2 Sylvie Rouland,1 Anne-Gaëlle Biacabe,2 Isabelle Quadrio,3 Armand Perret-Liaudet,3 Thierry Baron,2 Jean-Michel Verdier1 1IN SER M UM2; Montpellier, France; 2Anses; Lyon, France; 3Hopitaux Civils de Lyon; Lyon, France



An atypical form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy has been identified in cattle in Europe, North America and Japan and was designed as L-type BSE (L-BSE) due to the lower apparent molecular mass of the unglycosylated, protease-

resistant prion protein (PrPres) detected by western blot compared with classical BSE. Experimental evidences from studies in transgenic mice expressing human PrP and in primate models suggest a higher risk of transmission to humans of the L-BSE form than for classical BSE agent. However, a major unresolved issue concerns the potential transmissibility of the L-BSE agent by oral route. To address this question, we infected mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus), a non-human primate model, with L-BSE by intracerebral or oral route.



Four adult lemurs were intracerebrally (IC) inoculated with 5mg of L-BSE infected brain homogenate of an atypical French BSE case (02-2528). Four young and four adult animals were fed with 5 mg or 50 mg of infected brain. After sacrifice, the brain tissues were biochemically and immunocytochemically investigated for PrPres.



The 4 animals IC inoculated died at 19 and 22 months postinoculation (mpi). They developed blindness, tremor, abnormal posture, incoordinated movements, balance loss. Symptoms get worse according to the disease progression, until severe ataxia. Severe spongiosis was evidenced into the thalamus, the striatum, the mesencephalon, and the brainstem, whereas into the cortex the vacuolisation was weaker. Strong deposits of PrPres were detected into the thalamus, the striatum, and the hippocampus whereas in the cerebral cortex, PrPres was prominently accumulated in plaques.



The orally inoculated animals showed similar clinical symptoms occurring between 27 and 34 mpi. Disease was characterized by progressive prostration, loss of appetite and poor appearance of the fur. Only one adult animal showed disequilibrium. PrPres was strongly accumulated only in the striatum and thalamus and weakly into the cortex. No plaques were evidenced. Two animals that were orally challenged at the age of two years are still alive and healthy 34 months after inoculation. The western blot analysis showed uniform molecular profiles, irrespective of the route or dose of infection, and included notably a PrPres form with low apparent molecular mass (~19 kDa) similar to the PrPres in the original cattle brain. However, the PrPres profile in lemurs was characterized by a higher proportion of di- and mono-glycosylated species (up to 95% of the total signal) than in the bovine L-BSE inoculum (~80%). In addition, small amounts of PrPres were detected by western blotting in the spleen of three animals (one intra-cerebrally inoculated and two fed with 5 mg of cattle brain).



Here, we demonstrate that the L-BSE agent can be transmitted by oral route from cattle to young and adult mouse lemurs. In comparison to IC inoculated animals, orally challenged lemurs were characterized by longer survival periods as expected with this route of infection.










EFSA Journal 2011 The European Response to BSE: A Success Story



snip...



EFSA and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) recently delivered a scientific opinion on any possible epidemiological or molecular association between TSEs in animals and humans (EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) and ECDC, 2011). This opinion confirmed Classical BSE prions as the only TSE agents demonstrated to be zoonotic so far but the possibility that a small proportion of human cases so far classified as "sporadic" CJD are of zoonotic origin could not be excluded. Moreover, transmission experiments to non-human primates suggest that some TSE agents in addition to Classical BSE prions in cattle (namely L-type Atypical BSE, Classical BSE in sheep, transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME) and chronic wasting disease (CWD) agents) might have zoonotic potential.



snip...










see follow-up here about North America BSE Mad Cow TSE prion risk factors, and the ever emerging strains of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy in many species here in the USA, including humans ;







Wednesday, August 01, 2012



Behavioural and Psychiatric Features of the Human Prion Diseases: Experience in 368 Prospectively Studied Patients








Monday, August 06, 2012



Atypical neuropathological sCJD-MM phenotype with abundant white matter Kuru-type plaques sparing the cerebellar cortex








Monday, August 20, 2012



CASE REPORTS CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE: AN UNDER-RECOGNIZED CAUSE OF DEMENTIA








Tuesday, June 26, 2012



Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease Human TSE report update North America, Canada, Mexico, and USDA PRION UNIT as of May 18, 2012



type determination pending Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (tdpCJD), is on the rise in Canada and the USA








Monday, August 6, 2012



TAFS BSE in USA August 6, 2012



BSE in USA








Saturday, May 26, 2012


Are USDA assurances on mad cow case 'gross oversimplification'?


SNIP...


What irks many scientists is the USDA’s April 25 statement that the rare disease is “not generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed.”


The USDA’s conclusion is a “gross oversimplification,” said Dr. Paul Brown, one of the world’s experts on this type of disease who retired recently from the National Institutes of Health. "(The agency) has no foundation on which to base that statement.”


“We can’t say it’s not feed related,” agreed Dr. Linda Detwiler, an official with the USDA during the Clinton Administration now at Mississippi State.


In the May 1 email to me, USDA’s Cole backed off a bit. “No one knows the origins of atypical cases of BSE,” she said


The argument about feed is critical because if feed is the cause, not a spontaneous mutation, the California cow could be part of a larger outbreak.


SNIP...








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Saturday, August 4, 2012


Final Feed Investigation Summary - California BSE Case - July 2012





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SUMMARY REPORT CALIFORNIA BOVINE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY CASE INVESTIGATION JULY 2012



Summary Report BSE 2012



Executive Summary








Saturday, August 4, 2012


Update from APHIS Regarding Release of the Final Report on the BSE Epidemiological Investigation






Sunday, August 26, 2012



Detection of PrPSc in peripheral tissues of clinically affected cattle after oral challenge with BSE








2011 Monday, September 26, 2011



L-BSE BASE prion and atypical sporadic CJD










see the Duke, Pa, Yale, and Mexican study here, showing the misdiagnosis of CJD TSE prion disease as Alzheimers ;








Wednesday, May 16, 2012



Alzheimer’s disease and Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy prion disease, Iatrogenic, what if ?



Proposal ID: 29403









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Monday, August 20, 2012



CASE REPORTS CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE: AN UNDER-RECOGNIZED CAUSE OF DEMENTIA








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