Today, there will be a confirmation of the first incidence of a person being infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) that was contracted from contaminated blood plasma.
The man in question was elderly and died from unrelated causes. He was infected with the human form of mad cow disease after having a blood transfusion some years before blood was being closely monitored to ensure it was disease free, the Health Protection Agency will announce.
The HPA had previously advised concerns that a group of haemophiliacs who had received a blood transfusion were exposed to a slim possibility of contracting the fatal brain disease.
In 2004 the Department of Health released a statement warning 4,000 haemophiliacs as a “highly precautionary measure”. Government regulations have further restricted this group from becoming blood, tissue or organ donars and they are under obligation to inform their doctors and dentists before receiving future treatment. Authorities in five other countries are taking similar steps after it appears they have received possibly contaminated blood donations from Britain.
In the past, vCJD has been responsible for three deaths after the disease was contracted from contaminated blood. However, this is the first known time of an infection coming from plasma which is used to clot blood. It was hoped that the process and dilution by which the product undergoes before it is used would make it highly unlikely to carry any risk.
After the Government released details of a person dying as a result of a blood transfusion that was infected with vCJD in 2003, a risk assessment was carried out. The result of this culminated in the ban on anyone donating blood if they had received a blood transfusion since January 1980. White blood cells are no longer used in transfusions at all, while plasma products have been coming from America since 1999.
In total, 164 people have died in Britain after being infected with vCJD - the majority of cases resulting from the consumption of meat that was infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. An epidemic of BSE broke out in the 1980s and 1990s after it was discovered cattle were being fed meat and bone meal from other infected cattle, allowing the infection to spread.
It was not until the mid 1990s that the brain-wasting disease vCJD was first diagnosed. The majority of people with vCJD have contracted the disease after consuming BSE contaminated meat.
There was recently a warning from British scientists stating that the UK could be hit with another epidemic of vCJD with as many as 300 people being affected, when they discovered that depending upon a person’s genetic make-up, they could incubate the disease for a longer period of time.
