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Volume 26, Number 8—August 2020
CME ACTIVITY - Research

Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease among Physicians, Germany, 1993–2018

Peter Hermann1Comments to Author , Johannes Treig1, Steffen Unkel, Stefan Goebel, Timothy Bunck, Martha Jünemann, Tim Friede, and Inga Zerr
Author affiliations: University Medical Center Göttingen Department of Neurology, Göttingen, Germany (P. Hermann, J. Treig, S. Goebel, T. Bunck, M. Jünemann, I. Zerr); University Medical Center Göttingen Department of Medical Statistics, Göttingen (S. Unkel, T. Friede); German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Göttingen (I. Zerr)

Main Article

Table 4

Review of studies about health professionals and CJD*

Study or report
 Observation or sCJD patient
Case–control study
Wientjens et al., 1996 (34) Observation: 1975–1984 (Japan, United Kingdom, United States), meta-analysis of 3 case–control studies
•178 cases, 333 controls (hospital based, community based, and spouses)
•Nonsignificantly increased risk for health professionals (OR 1.5 [95% CI 0.5–4.1])
Van Duijn et al., 1998 (24) Observation: 1993–1995 (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom)
•405 cases, 405 controls (hospital-based)
•No increased risk for health professionals (OR 0.92 [95% CI 0.69–1.32])
Cocco et al., 2003 (35) Observation: 1984–1995 (United States)
•636 cases, 3,180 controls (population-based from a death registry)
•Increased risk for workers in physicians’ offices (OR 4.6 [95% CI 1.2–17.6])
Ruegger et al., 2009 (32) Observation: 2001–2004 (Switzerland)
•69 cases, 224 controls (from general practitioners and random digit telephone dialing)
•Nonsignificantly increased risk for medical professionals (OR 1.46 [95% CI 0.43–5.15])
Case report
Schoene et al., 1981 (36) 1 neurosurgeon
Miller, 1988 (37) 1 histopathologist
Sitwell, 1988 (38) 1 histopathologist
Gorman et al., 1992 (39) 1 pathologist
Berger et al., 1993 (40) 1 internist (with training in pathology 30 y before disease onset)
Weber et al., 1993 (41) 1 orthopedic surgeon (handling dura 20–24 y before onset)
Mitrova et al., 2000 (42) 1 physician, 5 nurses, 1 medical technician, 1 ambulance driver
Alcalde-Cabero et al., 2012 (25) Observation: 1965–2010; case reports and literature review
•202 health professionals (among 8,321 cases)
•65 physicians (9 general practitioners, 7 surgeons, 7 internists, 4 dentists, 3 ophthalmologists, 2 pathologists), and 137 other health professionals

*OR, odds ratio; sCJD, sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Main Article

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Main Article

1These authors contributed equally to this article.

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