LONDON (Agence de Presse Medicale for Reuters Health) - British officials would neither confirm nor deny media reports on Friday that up to 3800 patients with haemophilia, other bleeding disorders and primary immunodeficiency could have been exposed to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in blood products before these products were sourced from the United States.
“We are not giving any comment on the figures,” a Health Department spokeswoman told APM. “We think it is important to notify patients first.”
The government said last month it was preparing to contact patients who received transfusions from donors who subsequently developed variant vCJD. The world’s first possible case of vCJD transmission via transfusion was reported in the UK last December, followed by a second suspected case in July.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has conducted a risk assessment but Ministers have refused to publish it until patients have been notified.
In a new statement on Thursday, Health Secretary John Reid said: “Although there are now two reports of possible transmission of vCJD via blood, the risk of transmission via plasma products, which will have been derived from large pools of plasma donated from many thousands of people -- and therefore heavily diluted -- is uncertain. But it cannot be excluded.”
Reid said that the HPA had examined the risk associated with each batch of product and advised which patients needed to be assessed and possibly subsequently contacted. It had also advised how the possible risk to public health of those patients should be managed.
He said the HPA was sending information to clinicians to enable them to trace particular plasma products. The clinicians would then notify any patients identified as at risk as a precaution.
Aside from patients with haemophilia or other bleeding disorders, the other main group of patients who might have received significant amounts of affected blood products is patients with primary immunodeficiency.
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