Medical negligence news

BBC News - Blood test for vCJD 'could identify carriers'

Michelmores' clinical negligence team provide a link to the BBC News online article.

The new test, reported in The Lancet, offers the chance of earlier diagnosis and potentially the ability to screen donor blood.

But further studies are needed before it can be widely used to screen healthy people who may be silent carriers.

Variant CJD or vCJD is the human form of BSE - "mad cow" disease. It affects the brain and is believed to have passed from cattle to humans through infected food.

There have been 170 confirmed deaths from vCJD in the UK, but a previous study suggested one in 4,000 Britons could be incubating the incurable degenerative disorder without symptoms.

CJD causes the brain to develop a spongy texture known as spongiform encephalopathy.

Early symptoms include anxiety, depression and tingling pains. Doctors often do not realise that a patient has the brain condition until other features occur, such as difficulty with movement, or loss of mental abilities.

At present, there is no treatment for variant CJD and the diagnosis is often made when patients are terminally ill.

The new test was tried on 190 blood samples, of which 21 had variant CJD. The test picked up 15 of the samples with variant CJD - a 71% success rate.

It did not produce any "false positives" - showing that someone had CJD, when they did not.

Read more of the article by clicking on the link above.

Created: 07/02/2011
Categories: Blood products