| Abstract: | Prion diseases are one of the paradigms of modern neurological nosology founded on molecular grounds. Their incidence is low, however the public health challenges derived from their transmissibility, especially due to the appearance of a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) confers them a preferential place among health care authority concerns. The evolution of data from the European surveillance systems suggests a generalized underdiagnosis of prion diseases and casts doubts about their ability to detect a possible second wave of atypical vCJD, especially if their clinical-pathological characteristics change. Recent data also challenge the feasibility of a subclassification of prion diseases according to their genetic-molecular features |
