Posted on 12/08/2006 12:16:38 PM PST by blam
New vCJD scare rocks the UK
18:10 08 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie
A third person in the UK has caught variant CJD from another human, in a blood transfusion. Many more people may be at risk of this human form of BSE, experts warn.
Three of eight people tested so far in the UK are now confirmed to have been infected with vCJD through blood transfusions, autopsies have revealed. A total of 66 people in UK are known to have received transfusions from blood donors who later went on to develop vCJD.
Of those, 34 later died from other causes. The remaining 24 people have been informed that they may be at high risk of developing vCJD, but are not reported to have been tested.
In each of the three cases, the victims received blood from someone who went on to develop vCJD between 18 and 40 months after donating blood, which shows that apparently healthy blood donors can pose a threat of infection, at least in the late stages of incubation. Many carriers, unaware of their infection, may have transmitted the mutant prion in donated blood, experts say.
Definitive evidence
For that reason, it was prudent in 2004, once the first transfusion-related case was discovered, for the UK to ban transfusion recipients from later donating blood, say Kumanan Wilson and Maura Ricketts of Toronto General Hospital and the Public Health Agency of Canada. They penned a commentary on the case in the medical journal The Lancet, which reported the third case this week (see vCJD death linked to blood transfusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Virtually the entire population of the UK was exposed to infected meat in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but relatively few cases of vCJD have resulted so far.
Including UK visitors from all over the world during this time period?
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