Potential treatments and treatment strategies in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a rare neurodegenerative disease that follows a rapidly progressive course, leading to death, usually only a few months from onset. Over the last 30 years, many treatments have been tried for this condition, including a wide variety of antiviral agents and immunomodulating drugs. More recently, potential treatments have been devised that interfere with the pathological processes involved in the formation of the prion protein. Most of these experiments have been performed in in vitro and tissue culture models and have yet to be tried in human prion disease. As yet, no treatment has been of sustained benefit but, currently, a preliminary open-label trial of quinacrine is underway in the UK.