Novel Infectious Agents and the Central Nervous System

The term "unconventional virus" refers to virus-like agents that differ from conventional viruses in significant respects--resistance to agents that inactivate normal viruses, for example. Certain rare and fatal neurological disorders, such as the Creutzfeldt-Jacob syndrome and the Gerstmann-Straussler syndrome, are clearly produced by virus-like infectious agents, but the nature of these agents i...