Blood transfusion dementia fear dismissed

DEMENTIA cannot be caught through blood transfusions as previously feared, a new study has concluded.

Last year researchers at University College London warned that some patients who had contracted Creuzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) through medical accidents decades ago also had Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting they were transmitted at the same time.

They warned that meant “theoretically” the seeds of dementia could be passed on through a blood transfusion.

But now a large study by the Karolin- ska Institute in Sweden has found that there is no risk of transference.

Researchers looked at 2.1 million people who had received blood transfusions from 1.7 million donors over a 40-year period. They found there was no difference in the rates of neurological disease between those given transfusions from dementia sufferers and those from the dementia-free.

“We’ve been working with this question for a long time now and have found no indication that these diseases can be transmitted via transfusions,” said principal investigator Gustaf Edgren, of the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute.

Last year British scientists who were studying the brains of patients who had died from CJD found large quantities of amyloid beta protein – a sticky deposit that stops brain cells communicating with each other properly in Alzheimer’s patients.

However, Dame Sally Davies, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, said the Department of Health was monitoring the situation and there was little risk.

The new research was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.