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Epidemiologic implications of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a 19 year-old girl

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Abstract

A histopathologically-verified, clinically typical case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is described in a 19 year-old girl. Only 3 previous cases of CJD have been reported in adolescents, and one of these was iatrogenically transmitted, while another was familial. Epidemiologic investigation of the present case excluded a familial component, and provided no evidence for iatrogenic or natural case-to-case transmission, or of other environmental sources of viral contamination. Young patients such as this one serve to emphasize the obscurity that still sourrounds the epidemiology of CJD, and invite serious reconsideration of the possibilities of transmission by undetected virus carriers, or of the agent as a natural resident of human cells, replication of which might be triggered by non-infective (e.g., traumatic or mutational) environmental events.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of CNS Studies, NINCDS, National Institutes of Health, 20205, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    P. Brown

  2. Laboratoire de Neurovirologie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France

    F. Cathala

  3. Départment de Neurologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Montpellier, France

    R. Labauge, M. Pages & J. C. Alary

Authors
  1. P. Brown
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  2. F. Cathala
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  3. R. Labauge
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  4. M. Pages
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  5. J. C. Alary
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  6. H. Baron
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Brown, P., Cathala, F., Labauge, R. et al. Epidemiologic implications of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a 19 year-old girl. Eur J Epidemiol 1, 42–47 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162311

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