Only a few more deaths from vCJD likely in UK

doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7484.164

BMJ 2005;330:164 (22 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7484.164

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Only a few more deaths from vCJD likely in UK

London Susan Mayor

Relatively few further UK deaths from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) associated with infections in the 1990s are likely, says research from Imperial College, London, published online last week in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk, doi:10.1098/rsif.2004.0017).

The study was designed to assess the full extent of vCJD cases after previous research had given contradictory results. Recent trends in the incidence of vCJD seemed to show that the primary epidemic was in decline after the peak of 28 cases in 2000 fell to nine in 2004 (www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/figures.htm).

Projections based on this pattern predict relatively few further cases. But a recent study, which assessed the presence of the abnormal prion protein associated with vCJD in appendix and tonsil tissues, indicated a higher infection rate (Journal of Pathology 2004;203:733-9). Three of the 12 674 samples tested showed signs of apparent vCJD, indicating that about 3800 . . . [Full text of this article]

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