February 2026 - Raphael Wurm

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Dr. Raphael Wurm, PhD

MedUni Wien RESEARCHER OF THE MONTH February 2026

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a very rare and always fatal neurological disease, in which brain cells are damaged by a type of wrongly folded proteins called prions. Research into CJD is difficult since the time from diagnosis to death is usually only a few months. To overcome this, we combined data from the Austrian Prion Reference Center (Head: Ellen Gelpi) with data on drug prescriptions. We compared the prescriptions from patients who would eventually die from CJD with those of a healthy group. We found out that in the year before the diagnosis, CJD patients were more frequently prescribed a class of medication used to treat depression and anxiety, and that this trend is visible perhaps three years earlier.

Our results suggest the presence of a phase of mild symptoms before the disease fully develops (‘prodromal phase’). If this is confirmed in future studies, it could open the door to earlier diagnosis and, eventually, better treatment.

Selected Literature

1. Wurm R, Klotz S, Erber A, et al.. Mood Alterations in the Prodromal Phase of Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. JAMA Neurol. 2025 Feb 1;82(2).

2. Uttley  L, Carroll  C, Wong  R, Hilton  DA, Stevenson  M.  Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: a systematic review of global incidence, prevalence, infectivity, and incubation. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020;20(1):e2-e10. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(19)30615-2

3. Baiardi  S, Capellari  S, Bartoletti Stella  A, Parchi  P.  Unusual clinical presentations challenging the early clinical diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.   J Alzheimers Dis. 2018;64(4):1051-1065. doi:10.3233/JAD-180123

4. Cetin  H, Wurm  R, Reichardt  B,  et al.  Increased risk of death associated with the use of proton pump inhibitors in patients with dementia and controls—a pharmacoepidemiological claims data analysis.   Eur J Neurol. 2020;27(8):1422-1428. doi:10.1111/ene.14252

5. Gelpi  E, Heinzl  H, Hoftberger  R,  et al.  Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Austria: an autopsy-controlled study.   Neuroepidemiology. 2008;30(4):215-221. doi:10.1159/000126915