- 15 Patients Given Prion Death Sentence Via
Blood Donor
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- From Patricia Doyle,
PhD dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com
12-17-3
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- Hello, Jeff - Finally, the medical community admits that
nvCJD (the human form of mad cow/BSE) is transmitted to patients via blood
donor.
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- I am sure that they hated to admit to blood donor transmission
of nvCJD. The evidence is so overwhelming that they had to begin to present
it.
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- Jeff, you and I have been claiming that prion disease
spreads via blood for many years now. The next step is to ask the 64 million
dollar question: Is Chronic Wasting Disease spread via blood and what
are the implications when infected deer, elk, and moose are shot and bleed
into the environment? (And since prions have no trouble being cooked, grilled,
roasted, sauteed, fried, BBQ'd, or turned into jerky...humans can be infected
by eating the meat of any CWD deer, elk and moose, etc. -JR)
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- Patricia Doyle
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- nvCJD Spread Through Blood Transmission - UK
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- A ProMED-mail post
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- ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society
for Infectious Diseases <http://www.isid.org>
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- nvCJD Suspected To Have Been Contract By Blood
Donation
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- BBC News Online
12-17-3
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- UK: variant CJD suspected to have been contracted by
blood donation
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- Health secretary John Reid said that a man who received
donor blood during an operation in 1997 developed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease [abbreviated as CJD (new var.) or vCJD in ProMED-mail] and died
6 years later. The blood was taken long before the donor was diagnosed
with the brain-wasting disease.
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- Measures already exist which attempt to cut the risk
of CJD transmission during blood transfusions. So far, 143 cases of vCJD
have been diagnosed in the UK, although the numbers of new cases are falling.
So far there is no established treatment for the illness, which causes
massive brain damage and normally kills within months of being detected.
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- Other people have received blood from donors who went
on to develop vCJD -- 15 in total. All have been contacted and offered
counselling. However, none of these people has so far gone on to develop
the disease, although it may have a long incubation period.
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- The risks of receiving blood carrying the "rogue"
prions that cause vCJD are largely unknown, although previously thought
to be tiny, as no confirmed cases could be identified. In this case, the
donor involved gave blood in 1997, and fell ill with [variant] CJD in 1999,
dying shortly afterwards. The disease did not develop in the recipient
until this year, and the patient died earlier this month. Postmortem results
appear to confirm vCJD.
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- Mr Reid, in a statement to the House of Commons, said:
"This is possibly not a proven causal connection -- it's also possible
that both individuals acquired [variant] CJD separately. This is a single
incident, so it is impossible to be sure which was the route of the infection.
However, the possibility of this being transfusion-related cannot be discounted.
That is the conclusion of the chief medical officer and experts. It is
because this is the first report from anywhere in the world of the possible
transmission of vCJD from person to person via blood that I thought it
right to come to the despatch box to inform the House on a precautionary
basis."
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- However, he conceded that there was a chance this was
the 1st recorded case of blood from an apparently healthy donor causing
[variant] CJD in the recipient. One other person is thought to have received
blood from the same donor.
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- The announcement is likely to cause concern among the
tens of thousands of patients who receive blood transfusions each year.
The concern is that, because of the long incubation period of vCJD in humans,
other regular donors might be carrying the illness without knowing it --
or having any way of finding out. However, since this transfusion, stringent
measures have been introduced in an effort to make blood taken from UK
donors safer. The white cells from the blood -- thought to be more likely
to harbour prions -- are routinely removed from UK donations. In addition,
many blood products used in the UK are manufactured using donated blood
from elsewhere in the world.
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- The US banned the use of UK donor blood when fears over
vCJD first arose. Mr Reid has asked the government's expert committee on
blood to urgently examine whether new measures are needed to ensure the
safety of donated blood. He has also asked the National Blood Service to
enter discussions with the medical royal colleges and NHS hospitals to
ensure blood products are only used when they are only absolutely necessary.
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/default.stm
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- -- ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>
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- [This is unwelcome news. Further information is awaited
concerning the nature of the tests carried out to establish the vCJD diagnosis.
- Mod.CP]
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- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD Please visit my "Emerging
Diseases" message board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God
and in Good Health
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