Journal
LANCET
Volume 364, Issue 9441, Pages 1260-1262Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17143-2
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- MRC [MC_U123160655] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [MC_U123160655] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is thought to be caused by dietary or other exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prions. The prevalence of preclinical or subclinical prion infection in the UK is currently unknown. Since clinical variant CJD is uniformly associated with tonsillar prion infection, we screened 2000 anonymous surgical tonsillectomy specimens for disease-associated prion protein. Analysis by both high sensitivity immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry detected no positive cases. However, this negative result cannot provide reassurance that relevant community infection is unlikely because of the fairly small sample size, demographic and age-related factors, and unknown test sensitivity during the prolonged incubation period. Nevertheless, our findings establish a protocol for prevalence screening on a national scale.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available