Early treatment of patients with specific molecular subtypes of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may affect treatment effects

Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) is a fatal, rapidly progressive, neurodegenerative condition caused by prions that has an average survival time of 4–6 months. Unfortunately, clinical treatment trials in sCJD have not been successful including a recent study that evaluated doxycycline.1

In their JNNP paper, Varges et al2 present data on a small randomised double-blind trial as well as an observational study examining the use of doxycycline in patients with sCJD. Compared with the doxycycline study conducted by Haïk and colleagues, this most recent study examined the use of doxycycline in a relatively earlier stage of sCJD by …