Can Past Surgery Cause CJD, Alzheimers or Parkinsons?
A jarring statistical study concludes that with few exceptions, those who become afflicted with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) do so 20 years after some type of surgery.
Caused by an infectious protein called a prion, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD is the brain-wasting and always fatal disease that slowly causes holes in the brain, making it sponge-like. It is the human variant of mad cow disease, and scrapie in sheep, and is also called a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or TSE.
Heredity can be a cause but most cases are called sporadic, meaning their cause is unknown.
The reliability of the data prompted researchers to conclude there is a cause-and-effect relationship between CJD and surgery. Without ruling out blood transfusions as the route, the team suggested that prions may enter the body through the central or peripheral nervous system, conceivably from sanitized but reused equipment.
Unlike germs, prions are not alive and have no DNA, making them impossible to destroy by traditional methods such as heat or radiation.
But the nervous system route has greater implications: if CJD is externally caused by surgery, other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could also be transmitted through surgery and lie dormant for decades before striking.
This study was released in advance of publishing in the print version of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry but the full article is available online now at: http://bit.ly/bxamv6.