§ Lord Lucasasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the conclusions of the article The risk of blood-borne Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Dev Biol Stand 2000; 102: 53–9, Brown P, and in particular the conclusion that "infectivity is not reduced by leukodepletion filtration", will affect policy on blood donation in the United Kingdom. [HL2369]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)Leucodepletion was introduced, on the advice of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), as a precautionary measure against the theoretical risk of transmitting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) through blood transfusion. A detailed risk assessment of variant CJD infectivity in blood commissioned by the Department of Health from Det Norske Veritas (February 1999) concluded that "leucodepletion appears to have significant benefit in reducing the risk of variant CJD infection through blood transfusion". This assessment was considered and accepted by SEAC.
We are continually reviewing the available evidence on the effectiveness of leucodepletion but, to date, there has been no new evidence to justify a change of policy. The article by Dr Paul Brown describes experimental studies with scrapie and sporadic CJD and concludes, on the basis of preliminary data, that the negligible plasma infectivity detected in experiments in mice is not significantly reduced by leucodepletion. It does not consider variant CJD, except to say that the risks of blood-borne transmission are unknown, or provide conclusive evidence on the effectiveness of leucodepletion in reducing the risk of variant CJD.