TY - JOUR AU - Diack, Abigail AU - Ritchie, Diane AU - Bishop, Matthew AU - Pinion, Victoria AU - Brandel, Jean-Philippe AU - Haik, Stephane AU - Tagliavini, Fabrizio AU - Van Duijn, Cornelia AU - Belay, Ermias AU - Gambetti, Pierluigi AU - Schonberger, Lawrence AU - Piccardo, Pedro AU - Will, Robert AU - Manson, Jean T1 - Constant Transmission Properties of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in 5 Countries T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2012 VL - 18 IS - 10 SP - 1574 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) has been reported in 12 countries. We hypothesized that a common strain of agent is responsible for all vCJD cases, regardless of geographic origin. To test this hypothesis, we inoculated strain-typing panels of wild-type mice with brain material from human vCJD case-patients from France, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States. Mice were assessed for clinical disease, neuropathologic changes, and glycoform profile; results were compared with those for 2 reference vCJD cases from the United Kingdom. Transmission to mice occurred from each sample tested, and data were similar between non-UK and UK cases, with the exception of the ranking of mean clinical incubation times of mouse lines. These findings support the hypothesis that a single strain of infectious agent is responsible for all vCJD infections. However, differences in incubation times require further subpassage in mice to establish any true differences in strain properties between cases. KW - Prion KW - strain KW - variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease KW - transmissible spongiform encephalopathy KW - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease KW - CJD KW - vCJD KW - TSE KW - BSE KW - prions KW - United States KW - the Netherland KW - France KW - Italy KW - United Kingdom KW - USA KW - UK KW - transmission properties KW - the Netherlands DO - 10.3201/eid1810.120792 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/10/12-0792_article ER - End of Reference