Brain tissue revealing the presence of typical amyloid plaques found in a case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Note that the plaques vary in size, and consist of a hyaline eosinophilic core with a peripheral margin of radiating fibrils surrounded by a pale halo. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a prion disease that was first described in 1996 in the United Kingdom. There is now strong scientific evidence that the agent responsible for the outbreak of prion disease in cows, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or 'mad cow' disease), is the same agent responsible for the outbreak of vCJD in humans. Both disorders are invariably fatal brain diseases with unusually long incubation periods measured in years, and are caused by an unconventional transmissible agent called a prion. vCJD is not the same disease as classic CJD. It has different clinical and pathologic characteristics from classic CJD. Each disease also has a particular genetic profile of the prion protein gene.