Neurodegenerative diseases are some of the most troubling to mankind, especially because there are no cures at present. Alzheimer's disease, for instance, is extremely distressing for the patient and the family and can linger for many years. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is another distressing, albeit very rare, neurological disease that has no cure. Unlike Alzheimer's, this disease kills its victims quickly, within just months after diagnosis.
There are four forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and one type actually is inherited by child from his or her parents through a genetic mutation. This is called fCJD or familial CJD and it includes perhaps 10 percent of all CJD patients. Far more patients, about 85 percent, have sporadic CJD or sCJD. People with sCJD acquire the disease seemingly randomly with no connection to heredity or other risks.
There are also two types of CJD that are acquired and also extremely rare. Many people associate CJD with mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), and more than 200 people have contracted what is called variant CJD and died from eating foods from infected animals. Most of these deaths occurred in the United Kingdom where nearly 200,000 cattle were found to be infected, and more than 4 million were slaughtered to eradicate the risk of spreading the disease. While some diseases can be prevented by simply cooking meat to a specific temperature, this is not true of mad cow disease.
This disease can also be passed on from human to human, but only in extremely rare cases, known as iatrogenic CJD. This comes from infected corneal grafts or contaminated dural grafts or electrode implants. It also has been found to transmit from infected human growth hormone, although this is no longer an issue as the drug that contained the infected hormone has not been sold since 1985. Because of the problems in the United Kingdom, many blood donation agencies do not allow blood donations from anyone who spent an extended amount of time in the U.K. from the years 1980 through 1996.
The disease is caused by prions, which are misfolded proteins that replicate over and over again causing holes in brain tissue. The tissue eventually begins to resemble a sponge. Early symptoms of the most common form of CJD include dementia, problems with muscular coordination and personality changes, while the vCJD form of the disease typically presents with severe behavioral issues and dysesthesia, which is when our sense of touch becomes extremely painful.
Not only is there no cure for the disease, there are no medications to effectively treat the symptoms or slow progression of the disease. Although it is a rare disorder, scientists still are trying to discover a cure or treatments as well as figuring out if the prions act to cause the disease or if something else is wrong that causes these proteins to misfold in the first place. Biotech services such as protein synthesis and protein sequencing are important parts of this research and hopefully will lead to a future cure or even a vaccine.
There are four forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and one type actually is inherited by child from his or her parents through a genetic mutation. This is called fCJD or familial CJD and it includes perhaps 10 percent of all CJD patients. Far more patients, about 85 percent, have sporadic CJD or sCJD. People with sCJD acquire the disease seemingly randomly with no connection to heredity or other risks.
There are also two types of CJD that are acquired and also extremely rare. Many people associate CJD with mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), and more than 200 people have contracted what is called variant CJD and died from eating foods from infected animals. Most of these deaths occurred in the United Kingdom where nearly 200,000 cattle were found to be infected, and more than 4 million were slaughtered to eradicate the risk of spreading the disease. While some diseases can be prevented by simply cooking meat to a specific temperature, this is not true of mad cow disease.
This disease can also be passed on from human to human, but only in extremely rare cases, known as iatrogenic CJD. This comes from infected corneal grafts or contaminated dural grafts or electrode implants. It also has been found to transmit from infected human growth hormone, although this is no longer an issue as the drug that contained the infected hormone has not been sold since 1985. Because of the problems in the United Kingdom, many blood donation agencies do not allow blood donations from anyone who spent an extended amount of time in the U.K. from the years 1980 through 1996.
The disease is caused by prions, which are misfolded proteins that replicate over and over again causing holes in brain tissue. The tissue eventually begins to resemble a sponge. Early symptoms of the most common form of CJD include dementia, problems with muscular coordination and personality changes, while the vCJD form of the disease typically presents with severe behavioral issues and dysesthesia, which is when our sense of touch becomes extremely painful.
Not only is there no cure for the disease, there are no medications to effectively treat the symptoms or slow progression of the disease. Although it is a rare disorder, scientists still are trying to discover a cure or treatments as well as figuring out if the prions act to cause the disease or if something else is wrong that causes these proteins to misfold in the first place. Biotech services such as protein synthesis and protein sequencing are important parts of this research and hopefully will lead to a future cure or even a vaccine.
About the Author:
Armand Zeiders enjoys blogging regarding biomedical research. For further details regarding custom antibodies, please check out the PrimmBiotech.com site today.