Iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease following human growth hormone therapy: case report

• Autor(a) principal: Caboclo,Luís Otávio Sales Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2002
• Outros Autores: Huang,Nancy, Lepski,Guilherme Alves, Livramento,José Antônio, Buchpiguel,Carlos Alberto, Porto,Cláudia Sellitto, Nitrini,Ricardo
• Tipo de documento: Relatório
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2002000300022
• topic: Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease; iatrogenic form; growth hormone; diffusion MRI; CSF 14-3-3 protein

We report the case of a 41-year-old man with iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) acquired after the use of growth hormone (GH) obtained from a number of pituitary glands sourced from autopsy material. The incubation period of the disease (from the midpoint of treatment to the onset of clinical symptoms) was rather long (28 years). Besides the remarkable cerebellar and mental signs, the patient exhibited sleep disturbance (excessive somnolence) from the onset of the symptoms, with striking alteration of the sleep architecture documented by polysomnography. 14-3-3 protein was detected in the CSF, and MRI revealed increased signal intensity bilaterally in the striatum, being most evident in diffusion-weighted (DW-MRI) sequences. This is the second case of iatrogenic CJD associated with the use of GH reported in Brazil.