Why is it that a disorder that affects the brain can be diagnosed with a skin biopsy? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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The rare brain disorder abbreviated CJD, for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, can be diagnosed with two or more skin biopsies, a recent study shows. Johns Hopkins neurologist Ted Dawson says the fact that what causes the disease, a particle smaller than a virus called a prion, can be found in the skin means dispersal is much broader than the brain.

Dawson: What it suggests is that these disorders are systemic disorders. Prions are in your blood, they're in your white blood cells and in your macrophages so it's a global disorder. It's not just isolated to the brain and some of the early studies they could find prions in the spleen and liver. To me it's surprising that you can detect it in the skin, it either got to your skin through blood or white blood cells carried it there.       :34

Dawson says this finding has great implications for other brain disorders. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.