These three broad categories of symptomatic disease – mental or emotional deterioration, incoordination (especially of gait), and visual disturbance, alone or in combination – represent the earliest abnormalities in the great majority of patients with CJD, and their progressive severity over a matter of a few weeks is almost always cause for an initial medical contact (Table 1). Examination at this time may reveal surprisingly few objective physical signs, in spite of symptoms that to the patient are obvious, and this early disproportion between symptoms and signs has been responsible for a great deal of criticism of the medical profession by the families of patients with CJD, who ask (in retrospect) why the diagnosis was not considered earlier. The answer is that several more common diseases (especially Alzheimer’s disease) can mimic the early symptoms and signs of CJD, so that the physician is obliged to rely on the passage of time and progression of disease to winnow away these equally plausible alternative diagnostic possibilities.

也許是我英文不夠好
無法理解這段文字的敘述
請您看原文應該沒問題吧

我不確定有多少Alzheimer's Disease患者會去做這三樣檢查
在台灣光一個MRI就需要8000-16000的費用
(據了解, 健保對MRI有幾付)
不曉得美國會有多少人會為了確認 Alzheimer's Disease 與 CJD去做檢驗
而這三樣檢查也不是100%準確

None of these tests is sensitive enough to identify every case of CJD, and none is entirely specific for the diagnosis (Table 2); however, if two or all three of them are positive, the diagnosis is virtually certain to be CJD, no matter how atypical the illness, and no matter what the clinical supposition. Because of the availability of this battery of laboratory tests, brain biopsy is no longer needed or advised in the diagnostic evaluation of suspected cases of CJD.

Table 2. Laboratory aids in the diagnosis of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.
Test Sensitivity Specificity
EEG 67% 86%
MRI 79% High
CSF (14-3-3) 91% 91%
Cerebral biopsy 95% 100%


到現在Alzheimer's Disease 與 CJD是比較容易被拿來做比較的
你以AD, CJD 當 keyword去搜尋paper就會發現