Also called: CJD
Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.
About Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare, degenerative brain disorder. Symptoms usually start around age 60. Memory problems, behavior changes, vision problems, and poor muscle coordination progress quickly to dementia, coma, and death. Most patients die within a year.
The three main categories of CJD are :
- Sporadic CJD, which occurs for no known reason
- Hereditary CJD, which runs in families
- Acquired CJD, which occurs from contact with infected tissue, usually during a medical procedure
Cattle can get a disease related to CJD called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease." There is concern that people can get a variant of CJD from eating beef from an infected animal, but there is no direct proof to support this.
It sits within Brain and Nerves.
The lead U.S. institute for this subject is the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.
Research on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
15 studies areregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.
What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.
Research currently under way
- Promoting Goals-of-Care Discussions for Patients With Memory Problems and Their CaregiversUniversity of Washington
- PrP-targeting siRNA Safety & Mechanism StudyBroad Institute of MIT and Harvard
- CLIME-CJD: A Multimodal StudyFirst Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University
- Biomarker Profiling in Individuals at Risk for Prion DiseaseMassachusetts General Hospital
- Efavirenz for the Treatment of Creutzfeldt-Jakob DiseaseXuanwu Hospital, Beijing
- FLOWER: Following Longitudinal Outcomes With Epidemiology for Rare DiseasesxCures
Research already completed
- Correlation Analysis Between Peripheral Blood PrPC Levels and Disease Severity and Prognosis in Patients With Acute Cerebral InfarctionThe First Hospital of Jilin University
- Evaluation of Safety, Tolerability and Immune Responses of Ebola-S and Marburg Vaccines in Healthy AdultsAlbert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute
- Notification of Donors With Positive Microbiology MarkersNHS Blood and Transplant
- Evaluation of Diagnostic Criteria for Creutzfeldt Jakob DiseasePeking University Third Hospital
- PRION-1: Quinacrine for Human Prion DiseaseMedical Research Council
- CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) Quinacrine StudyUniversity of California, San Francisco
Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.
Where to read more
Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.
Start Here
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob DiseaseAlzheimer's Association
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob DiseaseNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, SporadicGenetic and Rare Diseases Information Center
Related Issues
- About Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD)Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), Also Called Mad Cow DiseaseCenters for Disease Control and Prevention
- Information for People Treated with Pituitary Human Growth HormoneNational Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Genetics
- Prion disease: MedlinePlus GeneticsNational Library of Medicine
Statistics and Research
- Prion DiseasesNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Clinical Trials
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Creutzfeldt-Jakob SyndromeNational Institutes of Health
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Prion DiseasesNational Institutes of Health
Medical subject headings
Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.
This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.