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If you choose to follow any links to the abstract and/or complete text of the item listed below, you will be leaving the Strategian Web site. If you wish to return to this page from the Web page you are sent to, please use the Back option of your browser. Clare R. Trevitt and Pramil N. Singh Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: Pathology, Epidemiology, and Public Health Implications. (... a review of the nature, causes, development, and prevalence [as of 2003] of the human prion disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease [CJD] and possible preventative measures. The authors state that prion diseases [like CJD in humans and BSE/bovine spongiform encephalopathy--or mad cow disease--in cattle] are invariably fatal and can be transmitted by inoculation or dietary exposure. These diseases are associated with the accumulation of an altered, disease-associated form of the normal prion protein [found in the brain]. Prion diseases result in neuronal cell death and a characteristic spongiform appearance of the brain tissue [the brain becomes pitted with holes in a sponge-like pattern]. The emergence of a variant form of CJD [vCJD] in the United Kingdom in 1996 has been causally and experimentally linked to the UK BSE epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s. The finding that BSE is transmissible to different animal species, unlike previously characterized prion diseases such as sheep scrapie, has raised enormous public health concerns worldwide. Although it is not yet possible to gauge the size of a potential vCJD epidemic, preliminary data indicate a significant dietary exposure to BSE-infected material in Britain and wider implications of the transmissibility of prion diseases. The authors conclude that the threat to public health has intensified research efforts to understand the molecular basis of prion diseases, understand their transmission between species, improve methods of diagnosis, and develop therapeutic strategies for treatment and prevention of disease. Other keywords and phrases -- prions, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, TSE -- from the text of the abstract and from the text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Volume 78, Number 3 (September 2003): pages 651S-656S. **The complete text of the abstract is currently available through the Web site of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition** How to find the above journal, magazine, or other publication? See Step 3: Locate of the Information Strategy for details. Questions? Please let me know. |
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