M Khalid F Salamat, A Richard Alejo Blanco, Sandra McCutcheon, Kyle B C Tan, Paula Stewart, Helen Brown, Allister Smith, Christopher de Wolf, Martin H Groschup, Dietmar Becher, Olivier Andréoletti, Marc Turner, Jean C Manson, E Fiona Houston
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a human prion disease resulting from zoonotic transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Documented cases of vCJD transmission by blood transfusion necessitate on-going risk reduction measures to protect blood supplies, such as leucodepletion (removal of white blood cells, WBCs). This study set out to determine the risks of prion transmission by transfusion of labile blood components (red blood cells, platelets, plasma) commonly used in human medicine, and the effectiveness of leucodepletion in preventing infection, using BSE-infected sheep as a model...
February 2021: PLoS Pathogens