UK Blood Donations May Be Contaminated with Mad Cow Disease

Toronto Star 9/22/04 (Canada)

U.K. blood donations may carry mad cow

BY TIM ELFRINK
TWO DEATHS FOLLOWING BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS SPARK FEAR

LONDON < Thousands of people who received plasma or other blood products in
Britain received letters from the government today warning that they may
have been exposed to the deadly human form of mad cow disease.

The letters come after the deaths of the first two patients who may have
contracted the disease from a blood transfusion. One patient died of variant
Cruetzfeldt-Jacob disease in December, and another died in July of unrelated
causes.

British health officials stressed that the letters were precautionary, and
the recipients faced only a slightly increased risk of contracting the
disease.

"This information will enable these people and their doctors to take the
necessary steps to minimize the risk of onward transmission of vCJD," Sir
Liam Donaldson, the British chief medical officer, said in a news release.

The warnings went to people who received plasma-based products, such as
clotting agents, that may have contained tainted blood. Those who received
transfusions of whole blood from infected donors had earlier been traced and
notified.

Letters were sent to about 6,000 people, most of them patients with
hemophilia or other bleeding disorders. Of those, officials estimate perhaps
4,000 were directly affected by the potentially tainted plasma.

There is no blood test to screen for variant CJD, but precautions in
Britain and abroad have been in place since 1997.

Since 1997, the National Blood Service donor records are checked every time
a new case of vCJD has been identified. If the victim has given blood, all
stocks from that donor are destroyed.

Further measures to remove most of the white cells from blood destined for
transfusion were introduced in 1998. The process, called leuco-depletion,
was a precautionary move because white blood cells were seen as a
theoretical source of infection.

Later in 1998, the government announced it would phase out the use of
British plasma in the manufacture of blood products. Since 1999, all blood
products have been made using plasma from the United States.

After the first patient who may have contracted the disease from a
transfusion died in December, the British government banned anyone who had
received a transfusion since 1980 from donating blood.

The disease, which has killed more than 150 people, mostly in Britain, is
believed to be contracted in through exposure to bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, also known as BSE or mad cow disease. There is no known cure
or immunization.