Completed Infection & Immunity Heart, Stroke & Blood

Assessing the risk of transmission of vCJD via blood transfusion and identifying potential for diagnosis and prevention

Funder MRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of Edinburgh
Funding £1.4M
Period Nov 2007 — Apr 2008

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Four people in the UK appear to have developed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) after receiving blood transfusions from infected donors who showed no symptoms at the time of donation. This matters because it is unclear how many more people in the UK carry the vCJD agent without showing signs of illness, and whether they could unknowingly transmit the disease through blood donations. The current lack of a reliable diagnostic test for silent carriers makes it extremely difficult to prevent further human-to-human transmission. The research also addresses a critical unknown: whether vCJD behaves differently after passing from one person to another—for example, becoming more aggressive, targeting different organs, or evading standard laboratory tests. If this work succeeds, it could provide the basis for accurate diagnostic tests to screen donated blood for vCJD contamination, and for assessing the true scale of the risk to the blood supply. That would directly affect how blood transfusion services operate, potentially preventing future cases of transfusion-acquired vCJD. The project will also clarify which blood cells or components carry the infectious agent, information essential for designing effective decontamination or filtration strategies.

View original technical description
In the UK four patients appear to have developed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) after transfusion of blood from a donors infected with vCJD. These cases raise concern as the blood donors did not show any clinical signs of vCJD at the time the blood donations were made. Whether many more individuals will also develop disease after transfusion of vCJD-contaminated blood is currently uncertain, as is the number of people in the UK infected with vCJD but not showing clinical disease. These factors currently make the diagnosis and prevention of further human to human transmissions of vCJD extremely difficult. This project aims to addresses the major issues surrounding the transmission of vCJD via transfusion of blood or blood products. We aim to assess the risk of transmission of vCJD by blood and to determine whether the disease is modified after human-to-human transmission. For example, transmission of vCJD from one human to another may result in a disease in the recipient that is more aggressive, that targets different sites or appears different from the original disease in current laboratory tests. We will also study how the vCJD agent contaminates the blood stream, and which blood cells or components are affected. This programme will provide an important basis for assessing the risk of vCJD transmission via blood transfusion, and for developing accurate diagnostic tests to prevent further human to human transmission of vCJD.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Jean Manson (Principal Investigator)Neil Mabbott (Co-Investigator)Rona Barron (Co-Investigator)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Surveillance for Asymptomatic Prion Infection in Primary Immunodeficiency Patients Exposed to UK Sourced Immunoglobulin
The use of human recombinant prion protein as a substrate in an improved in vitro amplification-based blood test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease infectivity
Genetic risk factors and other characteristics which contribute to pathogenesis in human prion disease, including vCJD
Studying immune responses to viruses in healthy blood donors
Refining the clinical use of pentosan polysulphate for TSEs: animal models of intravenous infection and intervention

Original classification

Research Grant

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