Blood transfusion linked to mad cow disease death
First UK case of variant CJD from blood.
22 December 2003
NICOLA JONES
Blood donation: screening measures may need rethink.
A patient who died from the human form of mad cow disease may have caught the illness from a blood transfusion. Policies governing blood donation may require a rethink as a result.
It is not possible to tell whether the patient caught the fatal disease - called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) - from the transfusion or contracted it by eating infected meat. But the incident is the first case of "possible transmission" through transfusion - something that scientists have long known to be a possibility.
Britain's Department of Health and the National Blood Service have since contacted 15 other patients who also received blood from donors who later died from vCJD. The patients have been offered counselling.
There is no blood test for vCJD, so blood banks cannot check their stocks for signs of the disease. But precautions are in place to minimize the risk of transmission. US and Canadian blood banks refuse donations from British citizens or those who have spent a significant amount of time in the country. In Britain itself, transfusions are stripped of white blood cells, which are thought to aid disease transmission.
The donor in this case gave blood in 1996, before the precautions were put in place. He fell ill and died in 1999; the recipient of his blood died in autumn this year.
"There won't be any changes to these procedures or precautions," says National Blood Service spokesperson Jude Pamington. But an advisory committee is discussing whether recipients of transfusions should be allowed to donate blood. If they are excluded, the number of blood donors could drop by up to 15%.
Five of the 15 patients who received contaminated blood were given the transfusions after the white blood cells had been removed. The other ten received them before the precaution was implemented.
Scientists think that the incubation period of vCJD may be as long as 30 years, so it is impossible to determine whether other past blood donors will yet contract vCJD.
Britain's health secretary John Reid told the parliament there could be other ways to reduce transmission risk. "It is apparent that much more blood and blood products are used clinically than need to be used," he said. Reid said he would ask the National Blood Service to have urgent discussions with the National Health Service to explore how blood supplies can be used more efficiently.
