Virus infections, albeit with a very long period between initial infection and development of symptoms, are known to cause some other dementing illnesses. It is probably not quite right to call them viruses as the infective agents which are responsible for diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are very unlike conventional viruses. There is also a rare brain disease which occurs in New Guinea and an infectious disease of sheep called scrapie in which an infectious particle of some sort appears to play a part as seerris to be the case too for the more recently publicized disease of cattle — bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The interrelationships, if any, between these conditions are complex but the fact that an infectious agent seems to be involved has led to the search for the presence of a virus or similar particle in Alzheimer's disease. So far, none has been definitely implicated.
*50\138\2*
General Health