Symptoms

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is marked by rapid mental deterioration, usually within a few months. Early signs and symptoms typically include:

• Personality changes
• Memory loss
• Impaired thinking
• Blurred vision or blindness
• Insomnia
• Incoordination
• Difficulty speaking
• Difficulty swallowing
• Sudden, jerky movements

As the disease progresses, mental symptoms worsen. Most people eventually fall into a coma. Heart failure, lung (respiratory) failure, pneumonia or other infections are generally the cause of death, which usually occurs within a year.

In people with the rarer vCJD, psychiatric symptoms may be more apparent in the beginning. In many cases, dementia — the loss of the ability to think, reason and remember — develops later in the illness. vCJD also affects people at a younger age and appears to last 12 to 14 months.