Interesting.
I haven’t donated blood in years because I lived in Europe, and apparently, there is too much of a risk that I will spread mad cow disease.
Have there been cases of CFS developing following a transfusion, and it was found that the donor has CFS? This article really doesn’t give many details.
This FDA blood advisory committee has been involved in a four part study to determine risk to the blood supply and this new recommendation to require exclusion of CFS patients came at the conclusion of the second of the four parts of the study.
The next steps include:
1. a retrospective assay of stored and previously donated blood to determine which donors had XMRV and which recipients received potentially tainted blood.
2. prospective tracking of donor-recipient combinations for XMRV transmission
3. developing a high-volume assay to screen out donated blood that has XMRV. Several studies have shown that around 4% of controls (general population) have XMRV, not XMRV.
What is worrying is that XMRV has been linked to prostate cancer, leukemia, breast cancer and also autism as well as fibromyalgia.
Medical professionals have been baffled by the sharp recent increase in the rates of breast cancer, autism as well as CFS in the young. A very hard to detect, but very intractable retrovirus, such as XMRV, could be responsible but it is too early to tell. BTW, I also got kicked out of being a Red Cross donor for having visited my sister in the UK during the peak of the mad cow scare. I had a rib-eye steak on Thanksgiving in a pub (couldn't find any turkey) and the very next day on the BBC they announced that as of that day rib-eye steak was banned due to the (yummy) marrow which had high risk for mad cow. I didn't get mad cow, but my wife is not sure, sometimes.