What sort of disease is creutzfeldt-jacob disease (c.j.d.)?

Fatal: Cjd is a uniformly fatal neurological disorder. It is among a group of unique diseases that behave like infectious illnesses but are caused by misfolded proteins, not microbes. The two common varieties affecting human are classical cjd and variant cjd (mad cow disease). There are similar diseases in animals also.

A prion disease: Cjd is caused by infection/exposure to an abnormal form of the prion protein (pp). The abnormal form of pp is a completely bent out of shape version of the normal pp . This abnormal shape is very hard for the protein to change to spontaneously, but this can happen (1 in a million people). Once changed the abnormal pp changes other pp's and so on as the disease rapidly spreads/kills the brain.

C.J.D.: Creutzfeldt-jacob disease is a neurological disorder, one cause of dementia, associated to same symptoms of the mad cow disease but not related to contaminated meat. Caused by prions. Prion diseases (or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) are a group of uniformly fatal neurodegenerative diseases characterized by progressive dementia and motor dysfunction.