WARNING FOR DEMENTIA, TRANSFUSIONS

LONDON The seeds of Alzheimer’s disease can be transmitted during medical procedures, scientists have said, leading to calls for the monitoring of blood transfusions from people with a family history of dementia.

Researchers at University College London discovered that patients who had developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) after treatment with human growth hormone also showed signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains after death.

The hormone contained misfolded amyloid-beta proteins, capable of setting off the deadly chain reaction that can lead to dementia. Prof. John Collinge, of the Medical Research Council’s Prion Unit and UCL Institute of Prion Diseases, said: “We have now provided experimental evidence to support our hypothesis that amyloid beta pathology can be transmitted to people from contaminated materials.”