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Types of Prion Disease
Types of Prion Diseases
Types of prion diseases include:
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). This condition can be inherited, in which case it's called familial CJD. Sporadic CJD, on the other hand, develops suddenly without any known risk factors. Most cases of CJD are sporadic and tend to strike people around age 60. Symptoms of CJD quickly lead to severe disability and death. In most cases, death occurs within a year.
- Variant CJD. This is an infectious type of the disease that is related to 鈥渕ad cow disease.鈥 Eating diseased meat may cause the disease in humans. The meat may cause normal human prion protein to develop abnormally. The disease is also thought to have been spread to people receiving cornea transplants from infected donors and from contaminated medical equipment. This type of the disease usually affects younger people and is rare in the United States.
- Kuru. This disease has largely been seen in New Guinea. It's caused by eating human brain tissue contaminated with infectious prions. Because of increased awareness about the disease and how it is transmitted, kuru is now rare.