Prion disease: New approaches to CJD diagnosis

摘要

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a difficult condition to diagnose during a patient's life, but cerebrospinai fluid (CSF) biomarkers are beginning to emerge that are capable of differentiating CJD from other neurodegenerative diseases with high sensitivity and specificity. In two new papers, published in Annals of Neurology and PLoS ONE, respectively, Alison Green, Lynne McGuire, Byron Caughey and co-workers explore the potential of a recently developed prion protein conversion assay as a diagnostic test for sporadic CJD (sCJD), and Patrick Oeckl, Boris Ferger and colleagues identify the cyclic nucleotides cAMP and cGMP as possible CSF biomarkers for CJD.