Assignment on Prion disease PDF

Running head: PRION DISEASE
Prion disease
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1PRION DISEASE
Table of Contents
Compare and contrast RPD and vCJD:...........................................................................................3
Occurrence:..................................................................................................................................3
Major symptoms:.........................................................................................................................3
Diagnosis:........................................................................................................................................3
Description of vCJD biological mechanisms and disease pathology:.............................................4
Description of RPD biological mechanisms and disease pathology:..............................................4

2PRION DISEASE
Compare and contrast RPD and vCJD:
Occurrence:
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is relativity rare and new neurological disease, which
classified as the transmissible spongy form encephalitis. The causative agent of vCJD is the
misfolded prion protein (PrPSc). On the other hand, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob often called as the
prototype of rapidly progressive dementia. According to Verity et al. (2018), rapidly progressive
dementia syndrome is associated with four extra repeat mutations in the gene of misfolded prion
protein (Asante et al. 2015).
Major symptoms:
Patient with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob has predominant psychiatric symptoms such as
frequent depression. Patients suffer often-experienced neurological abnormalities such ataxia
within months and dementia in late illness (Sigurdson, Bartz and Glatzel, 2018). On the hand,
since variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob is considered as rapidly progressive dementia, the patient initially
experience apathy, mild ataxia, and headache, seizures that will lead to death.
Diagnosis:
In terms of sensitivity, it is difficult to diagnosis variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob. The definite
diagnosis for vCJD is post-mortem examination of brain tissue (Chiesa 2015). On the other hand,
vCJD is the prototype RPD the diagnosis, postmortem can detect the disease. However, other
diagnosis involves MRI, laboratory testing such as blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid. Cell
counts of the different protein, IgG index are used for the RPD (Sigurdson, Bartz and Glatzel,
2018).