Latrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease with florid plaques.

Florid plaques indistinguishable from those found in vCJD were identified at a postmortem examination in the brain of a 58-year-old clinical suspect case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Western blotting of brain tissue revealed an unusual prion protein type. Since the patient had received a dura mater graft 20 years prior to death and florid plaques are not only found in new variant CJD, the findings argue in favor of an iatrogenic origin of the disease with the longest incubation time following a dura mater graft reported to date even though he may have been exposed to BSE.

Optokinetic stimulation in microgravity: torsional eye movements and subjective visual vertical.

Introduction: Microgravity provides unique sensory inputs to the vestibular and oculomotor systems. We sought to determine the effects of long-term spaceflight on sensing of spatial orientation.

Methods: Two cosmonauts participated in experiments on human vestibulo-visual interactions during a long-term mission (178 d) in the MIR station in 1995.

Phobic postural vertigo. Body sway during visually induced roll vection.

Patients with phobic postural vertigo (PPV) often report a particularly increased unsteadiness when looking at moving visual scenes. Therefore, the differential effects of large-field visual motion stimulation in roll plane on body sway during upright stance were analyzed in 23 patients with PPV, who had been selected for the integrity of their vestibular and balance systems, and in 17 healthy subjects. Visual motion stimulation induced a sensation of apparent body motion (roll vection) in all patients and normal subjects.