Review: Laboratory diagnosis and surveillance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) is a representative human transmissible spongiform encephalopathy associated with central nervous system degeneration. Prions, the causative agents of CJD, are composed of misfolded prion proteins and are able to self-replicate. While CJD is a rare disease affecting only 1–1.5 people per million worldwide annually, it has attracted both scientific and public attention as a threatening disease since an epidemic of...