According to studies, brain-damaging prion disease is becoming more common

New research from Japan suggests that a rare, brain-damaging disease caused by rogue prion proteins is becoming more common – likely due to an aging population.

The study, released Last month, Scientific Reports reviewed data collected by the Japanese government from 2005 to 2005 on 2014 residents over the age of 50 diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). During those years, the average incidence rate of CJD rose 6.4 percent annually. This increase was most pronounced in people over 70, but the pattern persisted even when the researchers considered age.

“Our study found an increase in the absolute number of deaths, mortality rates and incidence rates associated with CJD – even after age adjustment – in Japan between 2005 and 2014,” they wrote.

Prion diseases like CJD are caused by the misfolded form of naturally present and considered harmless prion proteins in the brain. These wayward proteins have the uncanny ability to transform other normal prions into folding like them, triggering a very slow cascade of destruction that spreads throughout the brain, leaving characteristic spongy microscopic holes that can be seen in the victim’s brain after death. Symptoms like dementia and loss of muscle control may not appear for years Decades, depending on the prion disease, but once they do, death follows quickly. To date, there are no available treatments for prion diseases and their death rate is 100% when symptoms appear.

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Some prion diseases are transmitted between humans or from animals to humans. A person becomes infected after exposure to brain or organ tissue (including via) contaminated with prions cannibalism). Others are inherited, caused by genetic mutations that make the bad prions more likely to appear at some point in your life. Most of the time, however, the prions seem to show up for no clear reason, which is known as sporadic prion disease. CJD comes in all three forms, although sporadic CJD is the most common version, accounting for 85% of cases. Regardless of the form, CJD is the most common prion disease in humans.

Although there is no single cause for most cases of CJD, age is considered an important risk factor. And this current study isn’t the first to highlight an obvious increase in CJD over time that is related to age. Other research has found similar trends in many countries, including die USA. But Japan is known for the largest elderly population in the world at more than 20 percent over 65. So it is likely that an age-related association with CJD is more pronounced there – a fate that researchers understandably worry about.

That said, CJD and all prion diseases persist Rare. For example, in 2017, only 511 Americans were diagnosed with CJD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But these mysterious diseases are perhaps the most brutal reminder of the stress an aging population will bring, both in Japan and elsewhere. Other causes of dementia such as Alzheimer’s are expected The incidence will continue to rise in the years to come, and may particularly affect places like the United States, where the rate of other chronic illnesses in older Americans has also increased over time.

CJD and other forms of dementia affect not only the people who develop them, but also the families and other caregivers who have difficulty affording their care, the authors warn. It is these severe socio-economic pressures that warrant “the attention of policy makers and the need for an attenuating action plan with a particular focus on preparing to deal with an increase in the prevalence of dementia”.