PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Federico Paolini Paoletti
AU  - Maria Di Gregorio
AU  - Paolo Calabresi
AU  - Lucilla Parnetti
TI  - Drug-induced Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease-like syndrome: early CSF analysis as useful tool for differential diagnosis
AID  - 10.1136/bcr-2018-224314
DP  - 2018 Nov 01
TA  - BMJ Case Reports
PG  - e224314
VI  - 11
IP  - 1
4099  - http://casereports.bmj.com/content/11/1/e224314.short
4100  - http://casereports.bmj.com/content/11/1/e224314.full
SO  - BMJ Case Reports2018 Nov 01; 11
AB  - We report the case of a 78-year-old man who showed a subacute onset of severe cognitive impairment, ataxia, tremor, stimulus sensitive myoclonus and hypophonia. Since a few weeks, he received a treatment with a combination of tricyclic antidepressants for mood disorder. The clinical picture mimicked Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), but we could rule out this diagnosis by means of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis, which showed normal level of tau protein and Aβ1-42, being also negative for CSF 14-3-3 protein. A complete clinical recovery was observed after the discontinuation of antidepressants. So far, some cases of drug-induced CJD-like syndrome have been described. In our experience, early CSF analysis shows high diagnostic usefulness in order to exclude CJD.