Parkway Hospital Hosts Seminar

The New Parkway Hospital hosted a seminar for physicians highlighting a rare, and invariably fatal, disease of the brain. This condition is called Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD).
Although human forms of this disease are somewhat rare, they progress quite rapidly and cause symptoms such as: dementia, blindness, and involuntary muscle spasms.
This disease first came to public attention in the mid-1980’s, in the form of the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) “Mad Cow” epidemic in Great Britain. CJD is a prion disease. Prions are proteins that are always present in cells, and only cause disease when they mutate.
In humans the best known of the prion diseases is CJD, which, reportedly, affects around one person per million per year. CJD is very difficult to diagnose “leading to speculation that the one cause per million report may be incorrect,” according to the National Alzheimer’s Association. The main symptoms of CJD are rapid dementia and “a range of neurological symptoms, including, unsteady gait and sudden jerky movements.” There are three forms of human prion diseases: Sporadic, Inherited, and Acquired. The acquired form of this disease is very rare, as it is very difficult to transmit. For more information about CJD and other prion diseases, please visit www.cjdfoundation.org or call 1.800.659.1991.