The study was done to clinically diagnose MM2C and MM2T-sCJD at an early stage with high sensitivity and specificity.
254 patients with pathologically confirmed prion diseases, including 9 with MM2C-type sCJD and 10 with MM2T-type sCJD, and 607 with non-prion diseases, were reviewed.
4 of 9 patients with MM2C- and 7 of 10 patients with MM2T-sCJD could not be diagnosed with probable sCJD until their death. Compared with other types of sCJD, patients with MM2C-sCJD showed slower progression of the disease and cortical distribution of hyperintensity lesions on diffusion-weighted images of brain MRI. Patients with MM2T-sCJD also showed relatively slow progression and negative results for most of currently established investigations for diagnosis of sCJD. To clinically diagnose MM2C-sCJD, we propose the new criteria; diagnostic sensitivity and specificity to distinguish ‘probable’ MM2C-sCJD from other subtypes of sCJD, genetic or acquired prion diseases and non-prion disease controls were 77.8% and 98.5%, respectively. As for MM2T-sCJD, clinical and laboratory features are not characterised enough to develop its diagnostic criteria.
The study concluded that the MM2C-sCJD can be diagnosed at an earlier stage using the new criteria with high sensitivity and specificity, although it is still difficult to diagnose MM2T-sCJD clinically.
Reference: https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/91/11/1158
