CJD: Variant CJD in a Second Genetic Type
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Variant CJD in a Second Genetic Type
In 2008, there were nearly 170 cases of variant CJD in the United Kingdom. At the end of 2008, a new MV case was found see the video or a report in The Lancet. This case has not been counted in the CJD statistics. This was because there was no post-mortem; so this case was labelled as 'possible'. However, it has been used to predict future cases of variant CJD which would be a good reason to include it in the official statistics.
The official Edinurgh CJD figures measure 'deaths of definite and probable CJD'. It may be useful to introduce an additional category of 'possible CJD' to make sure that no known cases are omitted. This could be the first person in the world, with this gene type, to have died from variant CJD. The significance of this was that another 50-350 more cases were forecasted for the United Kingdom.