Data on the experimental transmission in the guinea pig of some human chronic degenerative diseases: Creutzfeldt-Jakob and Alzheimer's disease.

Guinea pigs were inoculated intracerebrally with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and/or brain tissue suspensions from 8 patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and with CSF from 2 patients with Alzheimer's disease. After a very long incubation period (over 360-420 days) a serially transmissible experimental disease appeared in the guinea pigs inoculated with CSF from 5 of the CJD patients, with either CSF or brain suspension from one CJD patient and with brain suspensions from the remaining 2 CJD patients. The disease was characterized by tremor, ataxia, convulsions and morphopathological lesions, such as spongiform change, glial hyperplasia and vacuolation of the neurons. Inoculations of CSF from the two Alzheimer's disease cases gave negative results.