Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, including details on mad cow disease, symptoms, causes, variants.

Classification of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease based on clinical and neuropathological characteristics.

Abrahantes JC, Aerts M, van Everbroeck B, Saegerman C, Berkvens D, Geys H, Mintiens K, Roels S, Cras P

Center for Statistics, Hasselt University, Agoralaan Gebouw D, Diepenbeek, Belgium, jose.cortinas@uhasselt.be.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease of unknown cause. Patients are usually aged between 50 and 75 and typical clinical features include rapidly progressive dementia associated with myoclonus and a characteristic electroencephalographic pattern. Neuropathological examination reveals cortical spongiform change, hence the term 'spongiform encephalopathy'. Several statistical techniques were applied to classify patients with sporadic CJD (sCJD), based on clinical and neuropathological investigation. We focus on the classification of neuropathologically confirmed sCJD patients. In order to obtain a classification rule that correctly classifies this type of patients and at the same time controls the overall error rate, we apply several classification techniques, which in general, produce comparable results. The boosting method produces the best results and the variable 14-3-3 protein in cerebrospinal fluid plays the most important role in the prediction of neuropathologically confirmed sCJD.

Published 25 June 2007 in Eur J Epidemiol.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Research Today. All Rights Reserved.