Published 18 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b705
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b705

News

Haemophilia patient had variant CJD agent in spleen

Lynn Eaton

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A postmortem of a 70 year old patient with haemophilia has shown that he had the abnormal prion protein for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in his spleen. It is the first time the vCJD agent has been found in a patient with haemophilia or anyone treated with a plasma product.

The patient’s death was unrelated to vCJD, and he had no symptoms of the disease or any other neurological condition before his death. However, the Health Protection Agency is working with the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation to alert people with haemophilia to the postmortem results.

Although it has not been confirmed how transmission occurred, the patient had received one batch of factor VIII that was manufactured using plasma from a donor who developed symptoms of vCJD six months after donating the plasma in 1996. This was one of several batches of United Kingdom sourced clotting factors the patient received before . . . [Full text of this article]


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