Surgeons will remove tonsil tissue from tens of thousands of people born before 1996 and test it for the abnormal prion protein that causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This matters because people in the UK were exposed to the BSE agent through contaminated beef in the 1980s and 1990s, and the infection can remain silent in the body for many years before causing disease. No one knows how many people are silently carrying the infection. The archive aims to estimate the true prevalence of prion infection in the population. If the research succeeds, it will give public health authorities a clear picture of how many people may be at risk of developing vCJD in the future. This information is essential for planning blood safety measures, surgical instrument decontamination protocols, and other infection control policies that protect the entire population. The results could also inform decisions about whether further screening or precautionary measures are needed.
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BackgroundThe overall aim of the prion prevalence tissue archive is to estimate the prevalence of infection with the BSE agent in residents of England who are likely to have been exposed to the BSE agent through their diet. This will be achieved by measuring the prevalence of detectable abnormal prion protein (PrPsc) in the tonsil tissue of at least 50,000 residents of England born before 1st January 1996.The project will be implemented in three phases: Phase one: Establishing a project management team Phase two: Developing a preliminary collection network Phase three: National roll-out and main collection.This application is for funding to establish a project management team at PHLS to develop the scientific, logistic, ethical, financial and accountability framework for establishing national collection of tonsil tissue.AimsHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Plan of InvestigationHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Potential ImpactHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Policy RelevanceUnknown
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