Human transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in eleven countries: diagnostic pattern across time,

Address: 1Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Centro Nacional de Epidemiologia, Departamento de Epidemiologia Aplicada, Calle Sinesio Delgado 6, 28029, Madrid, Spain, 2Institute of Neuropathology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany, 3Institute of Neuropathology, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, 4Registry of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, -Department of Cell. Biology and Neurosciences, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy, 5Department of Neurology, Georg-AugustUniversität Göttingen, Robert-Koch Strasse 40, 37075 Gottingen, Germany, 6Department. of Neuropathology, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, 7U.708 INSERM, Hopital de la Salpetriere, 75651 Paris, Cedex 13, France, 8Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Erasmus MC, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 9Australian National Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease Registry, Department of Pathology, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, 10CJD Surveillance System, Division of Host Genetics and Prion Diseases, Public Health Agency of Canada, LCDC Building, AL 0601E2, Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0L2, Canada, 11Institute of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, and Austrian Reference Centre for Human Prion Diseases, AKH 4J, A-1097 Vienna, Austria and 12Research base of Slovak Medical University, Bratislava, Slovakia Email: Jesús de Pedro-Cuesta* - ; Markus Glatzel - ; Javier Almazán - ; Katharina Stoeck - ; Vittorio Mellina - ; Maria Puopolo - ; Maurizio Pocchiari - ; Inga Zerr - ; Hans A Kretszchmar - ; Jean-Philippe Brandel - ; Nicole Delasnerie-Lauprêtre - ; Annick Alpérovitch - ; Cornelia Van Duijn - ; Pascual SanchezJuan - ; Steven Collins - ; Victoria Lewis - ; Gerard H Jansen - ; Michael B Coulthart - ; Ellen Gelpi - ; Herbert Budka - ; Eva Mitrova - * Corresponding author Abstract Background: The objective of this study was to describe the diagnostic panorama of human transmissible spongiform encephalopathies across 11 countries. Methods: From data collected for surveillance purposes, we describe annual proportions of deaths due to different human transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in eleven EUROCJD-consortium countries over the period 1993–2002, as well as variations in the use of diagnostic tests. Using logistic models we quantified international differences and changes across time. Results: In general, pre-mortem use of diagnostic investigations increased with time. International differences in pathological confirmation of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, stable over time, were evident. Compared to their counterparts, some countries displayed remarkable patterns, such as: 1) the high proportion, increasing with Published: 10 November 2006 BMC Public Health 2006, 6:278 doi:10.1186/ Received: 03 April 2006 Accepted: 10 November 2006 This article is available from: © 2006 de Pedro-Cuesta et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. BMC Public Health 2006, 6:278