UK government Ministers link CJD case to blood donor for first time

Fears about the safety of Britain's blood supply were intensified yesterday after ministers disclosed the first case of variant CJD linked with a blood transfusion.


A patient with vCJD who died in the autumn of this year had received blood from a donor in 1996 who went on to develop the disease.


It is the first evidence of what doctors have long feared - that the incurable brain disease passed to humans through consumption of BSE-infected cattle could be transmitted via blood. Animal experiments showed that it was a theoretical possibility but there had been no hard evidence until now.

The donor, who had shown no sign of the infection when he gave the blood, died in 1999. A further 15 people who received blood from donors who went on to develop vCJD are being traced and will be told they may be at risk.


Health professionals will also try to trace several hundred more people who received blood or blood products from pooled donations, such as haemophiliacs. The blood in their cases is diluted with that from other donors, so they are thought to be at lower risk.

In a statement to the Commons, John Reid said that the case was the first in the world of possible transmission from person to person by blood. But it was also possible that both individuals had acquired vCJD separately by eating BSE infected meat.


'The possibility of this being transfusion-related cannot be discounted because it is impossible to be sure which was the route of infection. It is because this is the first report from anywhere in the world of 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.'



Ministers were told of the case last week after post-mortem tests on the brain of the recipient confirmed the presence of vCJD. Mr Reid said he had discussed the issue with Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's chief medical officer, before yesterday's announcement.



There is no screening test for vCJD but evidence from post-mortem tests has shown that signs of the disease may be present in body tissues such as the tonsils and appendix for several years before symptoms develop, suggesting they could pass on the disease long before they fall ill.

Sir Liam said that there was no way of deciding whether the donor and recipient had acquired vCJD independently or one had infected the other. 'But the conclusion reached by me and my advisers is that blood transmission cannot be ruled out and it must be taken very seriously.'


No details of the donor or recipient of the blood were released yesterday at the family's request. Ministers and health officials are worried about the potential impact of the discovery on the blood service.

Hospitals need 9,000 units of blood a day to carry out surgery, some of it life-saving, and depend on voluntary donors and patients willingly accepting transfusions.



Precautions to ensure the safety of blood have been taken since the late 1990s, because of the theoretical possibility that vCJD could be transmitted in blood, but the new case is expected to lead to extra measures.

Efforts are also to be stepped up to reduce the use of blood in surgery. Sir Liam said Britain's blood service was safer than in many other countries which relied on paid donations.



White cells have been removed from donated blood, believed to be the likeliest carrier of the infectious agent of vCJD, since 1998 in a process known as leucodepletion, and all plasma for the manufacture of blood products has been sourced from outside the UK. But 10 of the 15 people who received blood from donors and later developed vCJD did so before leucodepletion was introduced.



Sir Liam said that 24 million units of blood had been given since 1996, when vCJD was first identified in humans, and there had been only one incident of possible vCJD transmission via blood so far.

Blood transfusions were not free of risks and errors caused an average of 12 deaths a year.

'The risks of a shortage of blood have to be weighed very carefully because we are talking about real life and death situations and not about the margins of science and what we hope is a very rare disease,' he said.



The health department said 23 people who developed vCJD claimed to have been blood donors in the past.



Frances Hall, secretary of the Human BSE Foundation, whose son Peter died from vCJD in 1996, said yesterday's news came as a shock. 'We'll have to hope that leucodepletion is effective,' she said.