Abstract
The laminar distributions of the pathological changes in the cerebral cortex were compared in the prion diseases sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) and variant CJD (vCJD). First, in some cortical regions the vacuolation (‘spongiform change’) was more generally distributed across the cortex in sCJD. Second, there was greater neuronal loss in the upper cortex in vCJD and in the lower cortex in sCJD. Third, the ‘diffuse’ and ‘florid’ prion protein (PrPsc) deposits were more frequently distributed in the upper cortex in vCJD and the ‘synaptic’ deposits in the lower cortex in sCJD. Fourth, there was a significant gliosis mainly affecting the lower cortex of both disorders. The data suggest that the pattern of cortical degeneration is different in sCJD and vCJD which may reflect differences in aetiology and the subsequent spread of prion pathology in the brain.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-7 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Pathology Research International |
| Volume | 2011 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2011 R. A. Armstrong. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Keywords
- laminar distributions
- pathological changes
- cerebral cortex
- prion diseases sporadic
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- sCJD
- variant CJD
- vCJD
- vacuolation
- neuronal loss
- prion protein
- PrPsc
- deposits
- gliosis
- cortical degeneration
- aetiology
- prion pathology
- brain