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Blood alert: thousands may be infected with vCJD
Sunday Herald | August 29 2004
Comment: How did it get there in the first place?
THOUSANDS of people who received blood products prior to 1999 are to be warned they may be incubating variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease.
Health chiefs are to take the unprecedented step of writing to all those patients who received the blood from donors who subsequently died from the brain-wasting disease.
The move, ordered by the department of health in England, is the strongest sign yet that ministers are preparing for a new epidemic of the disease spread through blood.
Until now, they have always maintained that infection through a transfusion is a “theoretical risk”.
The letters are to be sent out to patients, including hundreds of Scots, at the end of September after the Health Protection Agency carried out a risk assessment on UK patients who received blood or plasma products, prior to all plasma being sourced from the US in 1999.
It is understood the letters will urge each patient to contact a specialist. The vCJD risk assessment, first announced by Westminster Health Secretary John Reid in December last year, was ordered at the time as a precautionary measure after a patient who had received a trans fusion from someone with vCJD also died of the disease.
Although the donor showed no signs of the condition when they gave blood in 1996, they developed the disease in 1999 and subsequently died from vCJD. The recipient of the blood died in the autumn of 2003 and at a post-mortem vCJD was found in their brain.
On December 17 last year Reid told the Commons that the case was “not a proven causal connection” but that “the possibility of this being transfusion-related cannot be discounted”. It was the first report in the world to warn of the possible transmission of vCJD from person to person via blood.
In March he banned blood donations from anyone who had received a transfusion since 1980 to prevent vCJD being spread.
The department of health last night refused to reveal the outcome of the risk assessment, but it is understood that behind-the-scenes talks have been ongoing with senior health officials and groups such as the Haemophilia Society about the potential outcome of the exercise.
Other categories of patients, such as those with leukaemia, burns victims and pregnant women, can all be treated with blood products. But those most exposed are likely to be haemophilacs who use the products to help their blood to clot.
The latest figures from the National CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh show the number of deaths in the UK definitely or probably caused by vCJD now stands at 147. However, news of the department of health move has fuelled fears of a new epidemic of vCJD, the human form of BSE, from blood.
Bruce Norval, a haemophiliac from Fortrose, near Inverness, said: “It’s very possible that we will have a secondary epidemic via blood from the initial victims who contracted vCJD by eating infected beef.”
Scientists have estimated that almost 4000 people could be harbouring vCJD, based on studies of appendix samples.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We have asked the HPA to lead on preparations for notifying patients who have received plasma products, and we have been working with the agency, clinicians’ representatives and patient groups.”
People who may be concerned should contact NHS Direct on 0845 4647
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