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 £1.3M
Period Apr 2008 — Apr 2012

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 reveals a dangerous gap in knowledge: no one knows how many people in the UK carry the vCJD agent without showing signs of illness, or how many more could develop the disease after receiving contaminated blood. Current diagnostic tests cannot reliably detect the infection in symptom-free carriers, making it impossible to prevent further human-to-human transmission through the blood supply. If this research succeeds, it could provide the basis for accurate diagnostic tests to screen donated blood for the vCJD agent. It would also clarify whether human-to-human transmission changes the disease—for example, making it more aggressive, targeting different organs, or altering how it appears in laboratory tests. Understanding which blood cells or components carry the infection could allow blood services to remove or treat contaminated products before they reach patients. These improvements would directly protect the blood supply, a system most people never think about until it fails.

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

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.