NR AJOB
AU Poser,C.M.
TI Notes on the history of the prion diseases. Part II.
QU Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery 2002 May; 104(2): 77-86
PT historical article; journal article
AB The protein-only theory of transmission of the prion diseases remains controversial. Other mechanisms such as the virus, virino, and viroid hypotheses are still under consideration. All these fit in the concept of 'slow' infections that had been proposed in 1954 by Bjorn Sigurdsson, an Icelandic pathologist. Regardless of the exact mode of infection, the presence of prions in the brain has served to unite Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome and fatal familial insomnia, as well as scrapie and a number of other animal diseases, into a single pathological entity, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The appearance of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United Kingdom and its putative relationship to new variant CJD, have put a new and unpredictable light on these unusual and uncommon diseases.
MH Disease Transmission; Great Britain; History of Medicine, 20th Cent.; Human; Neurology/history; Portraits; Prion Diseases/diagnosis/*history/physiopathology; Public Health/history
AD Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA. cposer@caregroup.harvard.edu
SP englisch
PO Niederlande