First case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease reported in Italy - update

A paper published in the Lancet this week describes the first case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in Italy (1). The patient, a 25 year old Sicilian woman, developed clinical symptoms in 2001 and was first reported in February this year (2). Although definitive diagnosis of vCJD requires neuropathological confirmation, the woman’s illness fulfils the diagnostic criteria for probable vCJD (3), a brain scan was characteristic of vCJD and the abnormal protein associated with vCJD has been detected in a tonsil biopsy.