TY - JOUR AU - Dietz, Klaus AU - Raddatz, Günter AU - Wallis, Jonathan AU - Müller, Norbert AU - Zerr, Inga AU - Duerr, Hans-Peter AU - Lefèvre, Hans AU - Seifried, Erhard AU - Löwer, Johannes T1 - Blood Transfusion and Spread of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2007 VL - 13 IS - 1 SP - 89 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) may be transmissible by blood. To prevent secondary transmission through blood components, several countries have started to exclude as donors persons who have received a blood transfusion. We investigated the effectiveness of this measure by using a dynamic age-structured model. It is the first such model based on epidemiologic data: 1) blood donor activities, 2) a case-control study on CJD, 3) age distribution of recipients, and 4) death of recipients of blood transfusions. The model predicts that an infection like vCJD, which has been introduced into the population by the alimentary route, could not become endemic by transfusion alone and that <1% of cases would be avoided by excluding from blood donation those persons who have received a transfusion. KW - blood transfusion KW - blood donors KW - variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease KW - models KW - theoretical KW - biometry KW - infection KW - endemic diseases KW - epidemiology KW - communicable diseases KW - emerging KW - risk assessment KW - research KW - Germany DO - 10.3201/eid1301.060396 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-0396_article ER - End of Reference