The evidence was presented to the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) in October 2020, and in February 2021 the DHSC announced that the ban had been lifted. Overall, the experts recommended the ban should be lifted while suggesting that improved surveillance measures for vCJD should be put in place and that other measures (like leucodepletion) should be retained. In other words, although there is still a risk of transmitting vCJD through UK plasma, that risk is extremely small. The risk of contracting vCJD worked out at one for every 5.2 million units of UK-sourced plasma transfused. They determined that the ban had only a minimal impact, saving around one to two lives (or 15 lives in the worst-case projection) over the next 50 years. Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) developed a mathematical model to work out the vCJD risk of UK plasma. They suggested that the tiny vCJD risk should be balanced against the harms that might result from plasma supply issues. Patient associations stated that, of the 75 patients who received UK-sourced plasma between 19, none had developed vCJD. Scientific experts pointed out that, of the five cases of vCJD caused by blood transfusion, four were related to red blood cell transfusion (non-leucodepleted) as opposed to plasma. Manufacturers talked about processes they had developed to reduce the infectivity of plasma. The evidence they collated was supportive of lifting the ban. Beginning in March 2020, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) conducted a comprehensive review of the safety evidence, consulting with plasma product manufacturers, academic scientists, government organisation and patient associations along the way. In 2019, the Safety of Blood Tissues and Organs advisory committee convened to work out whether the plasma ban should be maintained. What we do know is that the need for immunoglobulin has been growing steadily throughout this time. It’s hard to know how many people this might affect. There is some suggestion that, in patients with a particular genetic variation, the disease might lay dormant for decades before symptoms appear.
The idea was to prevent vCJD from being ‘recycled’ among the population.Īs of 2004, all blood transfusions have been leucodepleted, meaning the white blood cells (thought to carry the highest risk of transmitting vCJD) have been removed.Ĭases of vCJD have remained low since then – although some experts have warned about the threat of a potential ‘second wave’.
The ban on plasma was one of a number of measures introduced to limit the spread, along with a ban on blood donation from those who had themselves received blood transfusions.
VCJD was first identified in the UK in 1996, and dozens of cases were reported. In a handful of cases, it has been linked to blood transfusions from an infected person. A degenerative neurological disease, which always leads to death, it is predominantly caused by having eaten beef that was infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Back in 1999, as we counted down the months to the new millennium, the UK was in the grips of the vCJD crisis.
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