A GOVERNMENT exercise to determine whether Britain鈥檚 haemophiliacs are at
risk of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from clotting factors made from
donated blood has been dismissed as a sham.
Doctors and even senior figures within the National Blood Authority argue
that in the absence of a practical blood test for CJD, or substantial
epidemiological data on vCJD, the new variant linked to the consumption of
BSE-infected meat, the Department of Health cannot hope to assess the risk.
Instead, haemophilia specialists want the government to sanction a switch to
more expensive, genetically engineered clotting factors. Failing that, they want
to ensure that the products are made from imported blood.
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鈥淚 have no idea how they鈥檙e going to undertake the risk assessment,鈥� says
Christopher Ludlam of the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh and head of the
UK Haemophilia Centre Directors鈥� Organisation. A senior source at the National
Blood Authority agrees: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 see how they鈥檙e going to do it.鈥�
A Department of Health spokesman acknowledges that the data are incomplete,
but says: 鈥淎ny risk assessment will need to set out very clearly the assumptions
on which it is based, and ensure that the uncertainties surrounding them are
properly taken into account.鈥�
Haemophiliacs are at high risk when an infectious agent enters the blood
supply because their clotting factors are made from plasma pooled from many
donors.
One other method that might improve safety would be to remove white cells
from plasma products, as the rogue 鈥減rion鈥� protein believed to cause CJD is
thought to be concentrated on the surface of these cells. But it could take a
year to get a such a system up and running.