Diagnosis of Methionine/Valine Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease by Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification.

A patient with a heterozygous variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) with a methionine/valine genotype at codon 129 of the prion protein gene was recently reported. Using an ultrasensitive and specific protein misfolding cyclic amplification-based assay for detecting variant CJD prions in cerebrospinal fluid, we discriminated this heterozygous case of variant CJD from cases of sporadic CJD.