Diagnosis is suspected based on symptoms. Further work up often include a sleep study and PET scan. Confirmation of the familial form is by genetic testing. Differential diagnosis Other diseases involving the mammalian prion protein are known. Some are transmissible (TSEs, including FFI) such as kuru, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as "mad cow disease") in cattle, and chronic wasting disease in American deer and American elk in some areas of the United States and Canada, as well as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Until recently, prion diseases were only thought to be transmissible by direct contact with infected tissue, such as from eating infected tissue, transfusion, or transplantation; research suggests that prions can be transmitted by aerosols, but that the general public is not at risk of airborne infection.
Fatal insomnia
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
Excited delirium
Frontotemporal dementia
Masked depression
Alzheimer's disease
Suicide crisis
Transient epileptic amnesia