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A matter for debate: the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy to humans posed by blood transfusion in the UK
Author(s) -
Dealler S.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
transfusion medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.471
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1365-3148
pISSN - 0958-7578
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-3148.1996.tb00071.x
Subject(s) - bovine spongiform encephalopathy , medicine , disease , incubation period , incidence (geometry) , epidemiology , encephalopathy , blood transfusion , population , transmissible spongiform encephalopathy , intensive care medicine , european population , pediatrics , virology , immunology , biology , pathology , environmental health , incubation , prion protein , biochemistry , physics , optics , scrapie
Summary. If human infection with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) were to occur, donated peripheral blood from humans that might have become infected from eating adequate quantities of food containing BSE should, until evidence is available to the contrary, be assumed to contain the human form of the disease. The chance of disease transfer to a blood recipient in 1995, which might in turn cause clinical disease with an incubation period of 20 years, is calculated. Transfusion is calculated to be a potential cause of a maximum of only 0.2% of clinical cases of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease (CJD) in the UK population if the BSE epidemic were to spread to humans. Prospective epidemiological techniques would be unlikely to demonstrate any such minor contribution that blood transfusion might make to CJD incidence.