Doctors from the Harvard Medical School published a case report of a man who developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) after contracting COVID-19.
CJD is considered the human form of mad cow disease. Misfolded proteins or prions are seen in CJD. Did the SARS-CoV-2 cause the CJD, or is it something else? The history went like this.
Case Report
A previously healthy man in his 60s developed a fever several days after a family member was diagnosed with COVID-19. He became confused, slowed, and forgetful and tested PCR positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Over two weeks, his disorientation worsened, and he started not to talk as much as before, and he frequently substituted words for another. He also developed an unsteady gait with intermittent right-hand clenching.
On admission to the hospital, he was inattentive and kept repeating words. He could express himself, lost his sense of smell, and had difficulty understanding. He also had repeated jerking movements of the right arm.
Blood work shows an ongoing inflammation in the body. The cerebrospinal fluid tests are unremarkable.
His EEG was abnormal, and an MRI of the brain was suspicious of CJD.
The image below is from the MRI of the man with CJD. The arrows point to areas with asymmetric restricted diffusion.
The CSF RT-QuIC, 14-3-3, and T-tau later confirmed the diagnosis of CJD. He was treated with intravenous immunoglobulins and steroids to stop the raging brain inflammation.
Despite the treatment, his neurologic status deteriorated until he stopped talking. He became paralyzed on the right side of the body and developed spontaneous jerking movements. He became quite agitated. Sadly, he died two months after symptom onset.
Neuroinflammation
What caused the CJD in this case? In their discussion, the authors cited several studies that showed that the brain inflammation seen in COVID-19 could accelerate the development of other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy, frontotemporal dementia, and prion diseases.
I have often heard that patients with Alzheimer’s disease who get COVID-19 rapidly decline mentally and physically and sometimes die earlier.
A prion is transmissible. People can get it from contaminated surgical instruments, blood transfusions, or eating tainted meat. A prion can stay in the body and may take decades to present as a neurodegenerative disease.
However, in this unfortunate man, the brain inflammation from the SARS-CoV-2 infection accelerated the CJD.
The authors’ message in their report is that SARS-Cov-2 could start or worsen a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and may lead to worst outcomes, especially in the elderly.
Comments
Prion diseases have also occurred after the COVID shots. It could be from the neuroinflammation after the jabs, or there may be something in the sequences of the spike proteins made from the mRNA in the shots that leads to prion diseases.
I discussed the studies about that at – Prion disease and brain degeneration after COVID-19 shots.
Recently I posted VAERS Data: Neurodegenerative Diseases after COVID Jabs.
I looked into it after I found know someone whose Parkinson’s symptoms got better when he took nattokinase. – Parkinsonism resolved by Nattokinase.
That’s because Nattokinase Degrades Amyloids and Prions
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Reference:
Young MJ, O’Hare M, Matiello M, Schmahmann JD. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a man with COVID-19: SARS-CoV-2-accelerated neurodegeneration? Brain Behav Immun. 2020 Oct;89:601-603. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.07.007. Epub 2020 Jul 15. PMID: 32681865; PMCID: PMC7362815.
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