Bill Oliver wrote:

In article ,
Janet Baraclough.. wrote:

There is another way to contract nv CJD, via human blood products and
contaminated surgical instruments, which may explain why vegetarians
also develop the disease.

Janet.

Please provide a citation of a case of BSE/vCJD transmitted by blood transfusion.
Blood transfusion is an inefficient method of transmission in sheep, and as
far as I know, there has never been a case in humans. If you have a case,
please cite it.

More important, please cite the actual calculated risk (for example, see:
Dealler S. Transfus Med. 1996 Sep;6(3):217-22 A matter for debate: the risk
of bovine spongiform encephalopathy to humans posed by blood transfusion in
the UK.)

It's one thing to trumpet a theoretical risk. It's another to look at what
the risk actually *is.*

billo


And here's a description of the possible mechanism of infection:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=15058746

Br J Biomed Sci. 2004;61(1):48-54.

Leucodepletion for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.

St Romaine C, Hazlehurst G, Jewell AP.

School of Life Sciences, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road,
Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE, UK.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) have been recognised
around the world for many years. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), one of
the human forms of TSE, has been studied widely and thus far has not
proved a great threat to human health. The emergence of two new
TSEs--bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans in the UK--has caused great
concern. BSE has had an economic impact and vCJD is a threat to human
health. It has been shown that these two diseases are caused by the same
prion agent and are linked. Research indicates that vCJD behaves
differently to CJD and there is strong evidence to suggest that vCJD is
present in lymphoid tissues and B lymphocytes, which presents a
theoretical risk that it may be transmitted by transfusion of blood and
blood products. To minimise/prevent this risk, the UK government has
decided that plasma should be sourced from abroad and has instructed the
National Blood Service to leucodeplete all blood and blood products, at
a cost of 70 million pounds per annum, although it is not known if this
will remove this risk.