Epidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in Floridian Men and Women: 1988-2012 | Biomedgrid

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare and fatal prion brain disorder with unknown etiology. In the current study, we characterized the epidemiology of CJD in the population of Florida. Cases of CJD were identified using the principal diagnoses by ICD-9 code among 55 million inpatient hospital discharge records reported to the Florida Center for Health Information and Transparency from 1988 to 2012. We examined basic demographic and clinical characteristics, and trends in the annual incidence for men and women. We identified 390 patients with CJD. Most patients were Caucasian (90.0%) and 51.3% were male. The median age of hospitalization was 67 years (Interquartile range: 14). The overall annual incidence was 0.91 per million (95% Confidence Interval: 0.8-1.0) and the overall rate was slightly higher for men than women (0.94 versus 0.87 per million, respectively). Annual rates were similar for men and women except for the period from 2001 to 2010 when the rates diverged sharply. Among cases, 12.3% died in the hospital and 23.1% were discharged to hospice. CJD cases identified through hospital records in Florida have similar characteristics to previously reported data. Case-control studies are needed to elucidate environmental triggers of this rare condition.