Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a killer. What we know is that it wastes no time. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease will kill a person within one year of contraction. It is yet unknown how Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease chooses its victims, but it does seem to have accomplices, known as the spongiform encephalopathies, in the rest of the animal kingdom. It is possible that it may be known what means Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease uses in order to annihilate its victims, but the theory surrounding that is still controversial. By examining the facts and observing the evidence we shall one day uncover the truth behind this malicious killer.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a rare neuro-degenerative disease. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a rare neuro-degenerative disease that leads to the loss of coordination, dementia and death. Death usually occurs within a year of the onset of symptoms. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a human disease and can be dormant for as long as thirty years. The average age of onset is sixty years, but there are recorded instances of onset as easily as sixteen years and as old as 80 years. It is estimated that, world-wide, between 0.5 and 1 case per million population

Scrapie was the first example of spongiform encephalopathy to be noticed and has been known about for many hundreds of years. The two most likely methods of transmission of scrapie in sheep are infection of the pasture with placental tissue carrying the agent followed by ingestion making it an acquired infection. It is also believed to be infectious through a genetic disorder, which has led many people to speculate that careful breeding could eliminate the disease, however, to date, this has never been attempted (Chesebro). More well known, in light of current events is Bovine spongiform encephalopathy also known as Mad Cow Disease. An outbreak of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy occurred in Britain in the late 1980's and is believed to have been brought on by a food supplement given to cows in the United Kingdom that included meat and bone meal from dead sheep (Hager). The transmissibility across species between sheep and cows has led many people to fear that ingesting the beef from infected cows could lead to an outbreak of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease among humans. There have been no cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease reported that can be concretely linked to the ingestion of infected beef. However, on March 20, 1996 the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) of Great Britain announced that 10 cases of a previously unrecognized form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease had been identified and may be linked to the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy epizootic in Great Britain, where more than 155,000 cattle were affected from 1986 through 1995. SEAC expressed "great concern" about the identification of these cases; it is possible that they might represent the beginning of an outbreak of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans that would parallel the course of the epizootic of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle in the United Kingdom, but with a delay of 5 to 10 years. In addition, if new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is associated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, there is the possibility that cattle-to-human transmission of disease has occurred in other countries where Bovine spongiform encephalopathy exists (CDC). The committee emphasized that current evidence is insufficient to establish a direct link between Bovine spongiform encephalopathy and new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease; however, such an association offers the most likely explanation for the occurrence of this cluster of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease cases.

The most common misdiagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is Alzheimer's disease (Harrison). Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease was even described as "Alzheimer's in fast forward (Wlalzek)." The symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap. There can be spongy changes in the brain (a classic effect of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) in Alzheimer's disease, for example, and

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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)