Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is an unusual, degenerative, consistently terminal brain disorder, typically onset of symptoms occurs at about age 60. This disease has been categorized into three major categories: 1) sporadic CJD, 2) hereditary CJD, 3) acquired CJD.
In sporadic CJD, the disease occurs even though the affected does not have any known risk factors that would cause an occurrence of the disease. This sudden occurring CJD is indisputably the most frequently diagnosed type of Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease. This statistically accounts for at least 85 percent of CJD cases. Due to that there are some fifty to sixty deaths per year due to sporadic CJD in the United States alone. Similar figures are seen in other countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. In hereditary CJD, the infected person has inherited an abnormal gene due a family history of the disease or takes a test in which their results are positive for a genetic mutation that is associated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. About 5 to 10 percent of cases of Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease in the United States are hereditary and the United Kingdom has a population in the region of 58 million and there are only a few instances of deaths due to genetic CJD in a year.
In acquired CJD, the disease is transmitted by exposure to brain or nervous system tissue, usually through certain medical procedures. Acquired CJD is also very rare; so far there has been