Spongiform virus encephalopathies

Two subacute degenerative diseases of the central nervous system of man (Gajdusek and Gibbs, 1971), kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and two of animals, scrapie in sheep and goats and mink encephalopathy, are strangely atypical infections caused by highly unconventional viruses (Gajdusek and Gibbs, 1972). These four diseases have very similar neuropathology with a similar basic cellular lesion, namely, of clearing of neuronal cytoplasm and formation of vacuoles in pre-and postsynaptic terminals and eventual neuronal destruction with the production of a status spongiosus of grey matter (Lampert, Earle, Gibbs, and Gajdusek, 1969 and 1970; Lampert, Hooks, Gibbs, and Gajdusek, 1971). There is an associated astroglial hypertrophy and hyperplasia, and the astrocytes seem to be actually stimulated in culture in vitro as they are in vivo.