Diseases Caused by Slow Viruses

Abstract

These disease entities are grouped together because of their association with viral agents and their long-term, slow degenerative processes. There appear to be four distinct characteristics of these disease entities: an incubation period of many months or years, a degenerative course ending in death, a site usually localized to the CNS, and limitation to a single host species. Some specific disease entities that fall into slow viral diseases of the CNS and that affect humans are subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), progressive rubella panencephalitis (PRP), progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), kuru, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).