Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease presenting as major depression

We describe a 68-year-old white woman who initially had symptoms of major d epression and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she had electroc onvulsive therapy. With failure of psychiatric treatment and subsequent rap idly progressive dementia, she had left frontal brain biopsy. The biopsy re vealed spongiform changes, the hallmark of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), We report a case of sporadic CJD with unusual initial presentation of psyc hiatric symptoms.