VIRAL DEGENERATIVE AND DEMENTING DISEASES IN AGING

退行性疾病的发生率随着年龄的增长而增加。退化，退化 中枢神经系统(CNS)使患者饱受老年前期或老年前期疾病的困扰 老年性痴呆症。虽然大多数形式的痴呆症的病因仍然 默默无闻，痴呆症患者的数量正在逐渐增加 我们人口中由老年人组成的比例继续增长。 为了更好地了解这些年龄相关的退行性疾病 我们计划将我们的研究重点放在中枢神经系统的病毒变性上。这个 由瘙痒病和克雅氏病引起的中枢神经系统的戏剧性变性 疾病(CJD)慢传播剂使它们成为研究的极佳模型 退行性疾病。在这个程序应用中，我们提出了提纯和 瘙痒病病原菌的特性研究、生物学和生物学特性的研究 CJD菌剂的生化特性及组织培养体系的建立 用于CJD药剂的繁殖和致病机理和研究 实验性CJD的超微结构形态。我们的研究工作将是 在老年患者诊断、治疗和可能的治疗中的意义 痴呆症，以及定义一类新的 微生物，潜伏期以几十年为单位测量，并能够 导致中枢神经系统的严重退化。

The occurrence of degenerative diseases increases with aging. Degeneration of the central nervous system (CNS) leaves patients devastated with presenile or senile forms of dementia. While the etiologies of most forms of dementia remain obscure, the number of demented patients is progressively increasing as the proportion of our population comprised of older people continues to grow. Toward gaining a better understanding of these age-dependent degenerative changes, we plan to focus our research on viral degenerations of the CNS. The dramatic degeneration of the CNS produced by the scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) slow transmissible agents make them excellent models for studying degenerative diseases. In this program application we propose purification and characterization studies of the scrapie agent, studies on the biological and biochemical properties of the CJD agent, development of tissue culture systems for propagation of the CJD agent and studies of the pathogenesis and ultrastructural morphology of experimental CJD. Our research efforts will be of significance in the diagnosis, cure and possibly treatment of older patients with dementia as well as in defining the unusual properties of a novel class of microorganisms, having incubation periods measured in decades and capable of causing profound degeneration of the CNS.