Cerebrospinal fluid markers in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

CSF samples received from Norwegian hospitals between August 2005 and August 2007 were retrospectively selected from consecutive patients with tTau values > 1200 ng/L (n = 38). The samples from patients clinically diagnosed with CJD (n = 12) were compared to those from patients with other degenerative neurological diseases: Alzheimer's/vascular dementia (AD/VaD, n = 21), other neurological diseases (OND, n = 5). Total Tau, P-Tau, and β-Amyloid (Aβ42) were measured with commercial kits. Additionally, 14-3-3 protein was measured semi-quantitatively by immunoblot.The minimum cut-off limits for diagnosis of CJD were chosen from the test results. For tTau the lower limit was fixed at 3000 ng/L, for the tTau/P-Tau ratio it was 60, and for 14-3-3 protein it was 0.75 arbitrary units. For tTau and tTau/P-Tau ratio, all but three CJD patients had levels above the minimum, whereas almost all of the other patients were below. For the 14-3-3 protein, two CJD patients were below the minimum and five were above. Only one of the other patients was higher than the limit. The sensitivities, specificities and diagnostic efficiencies were: tTau 75%, 92%, and 87%; tTau/P-Tau 75%, 96%, and 89%; and 14-3-3 protein 80%, 96%, and 91%.The results suggest that 14-3-3 protein may be the better marker for CJD, tTau/P-Tau ratio and tTau are also efficient markers, but showed slightly inferior diagnostic properties in this study, with tTau/P-Tau marginally better than tTau.The prion protein disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a human transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) that leads to rapid decay of brain tissue. Human prion diseases are either idiopathic such as sporadic or spontaneous CJD (sCJD), genetic or familial (fCJD), acquired such as iatrogenic CJD (iCJD) or variant CJD (vCJD). Variant CJD is related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has clinical and pathological characteristics different from sCJD and has not been described in Norway. The most common form is sCJ