UK and blood donation

[AWB]

Yesterday, I donated blood at the “4 Your Health Expo” in DC. I usually donate to Inova Blood Services (affiliated with a local Virginia hospital), but yesterday I donated to Children’s Hospital.

I’m used to the dozens of questions that are asked, about risky behavior: sex with prostitutes, gay sex, sex w/ hemophiliacs, sex with those who’ve lived in Africa, living with gay hemophiliac hookers from Africa.

But yesterday, I heard a few new questions: whether or not I’d ever lived in the UK or had sex with anyone who’d lived in the UK?

What’s with the restriction on UK affiliation? And what do United Kingdomians ( ) do about blood donation if they themselves are considered risky?

[Nava]

Mad cow disease.

I’m just waiting for the US blood banks to start banning anybody who’s ever been in SE Asia because of SARS or Chicken Flu.

[hawthorne]

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

[ianzin]

This thread from less than a week ago discusses similar issues and may answer your question, and my post to that thread mentions the UK perspective.

Basically, it seems that the US blood donation people harbour utterly irrational fears about ‘mad cow disease’ which are considered utterly irrelevant by their UK counterparts.

[hawthorne]

ianzin
Basically, it seems that the US blood donation people harbour utterly irrational fears about ‘mad cow disease’ which are considered utterly irrelevant by their UK counterparts.

Cite?

It looks like nCJD is transmissible via blood products. We don’t know what its incubation period is. There is no known reliable test for it (other than slicing up corpses).

It may be that the 158 deaths in the UK is all there is going to be. It may be that new filtering technology successful in animal trials eliminates the risk to the blood supply. But there could be another wave of UK deaths.

It may be that the UK doesn’t bother with screening for nCJD exposure. But given the timing, that’s understandable: if their system was at risk, it’s too late now. For other countries, that’s not so.

Lots of blood products are pooled. On what - I think - we know, best case there is no ongoing problem. Worst case, everyone in contact - within 50 years - with a contaminated pool dies horribly.

[outlierrn]

they hit me with a lifetime deferment about 5 years ago because I spent 2 years on an airforce base in europe in the early '80s where it’s likely I ate beef from the UK

[ianzin]

@hawthorne

It may be that the UK doesn’t bother with screening for nCJD exposure.

I’m not sure that an argument can be advanced very far by presenting a series of ‘It may be…’ statements. It may be, then again it may not be.

It may be that the British National Blood Transfusion service know just as much about the science of this matter as you do, if not even a little bit more. It may be that they are just as concerned as you are about potential infection, if not even a little bit more. Their website says:

Each time you give blood we take blood samples for safety tests back in our labs. These tests look for infections that can be passed from donor to patient. The blood is kept in a quarantine fridge until all the tests are completed with negative results. Then the blood is labelled with its blood group and becomes ready for issue to the hospital.

[mnemosyne]

To my knowledge, there exists no blood test that a lab can do to test for exposure to/presence of the prions that allegedly cause vCJD. The only known test is via an autopsy, which obviously isn’t going to happen for potential blood donors.

While the UK doesn’t ban donation from people who may have been exposed (what’s the point, when it’s the majority of the population - they need that blood!) it makes perfect sense for blood collection agencies in “unexposed” regions of the world to ban donation from people who may have been. It’s the same logic as deferring donations (a year? 6 months?) for people who travelled to areas with malaria… you might have it, and if you do, we know it’s gonna show up, so until we are past that point with no symptoms, it’s just not worth the risk to the already sick/injured patients needing blood. Except for vCJD, there is no “past that point” - we don’t know what that point is. So until we know more, it is safer to say “sorry, can’t risk it”.

[bonzer]

@ianzin

Basically, it seems that the US blood donation people harbour utterly irrational fears about ‘mad cow disease’ which are considered utterly irrelevant by their UK counterparts.

The second part of this statement is broadly unjustified. The UK National Blood Service doesn’t accept donations from anyone who received blood anytime since 1980. As this recent Guardian article explains, this is partly due to concerns about transfusion transmission of vCJD within the UK:

Three people have so far contracted vCJD after receiving blood transfusions from donors who were unknowingly carriers of the disease. Among the victims was a woman with the MV form of prion protein, the first to be identified with vCJD. She died of other causes before the disease took hold. Worryingly, all had received the minimum transfusion of one unit of blood, proving the infection was easily passed on by contaminated blood. “The danger now is not from cattle, it’s from other human beings,” says Sheila Bird, an expert in vCJD at the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge.

The threat has forced the national blood service to bring in extensive measures to protect the blood supply. Anyone who has received a transfusion cannot donate blood themselves. Plasma is imported from the US. Other blood products are stripped of their white blood cells, which carry the infectious prions. The service recently began trials of new filters to “scrub” vCJD prions from blood. But there is still no blood test for vCJD, so it is impossible to know how much has been infected. If you receive a blood transfusion tomorrow, it could still be contaminated with vCJD.

The US restrictions on UK-origin donations are however obviously rather broader (and predate the above concerns about transfusions). But it’s not necessarily irrational for the US authorities to decline a (presumably) marginal input of blood to their overall supply because of a rare hazard.

[ianzin]

@bonzer

The US restrictions on UK-origin donations are however obviously rather broader (and predate the above concerns about transfusions). But it’s not necessarily irrational for the US authorities to decline a (presumably) marginal input of blood to their overall supply because of a rare hazard.

I am happy to stand corrected, especially from such a genial and enlightened source as Bonzer.

[hawthorne]

ianzin
I’m not sure that an argument can be advanced very far by presenting a series of ‘It may be…’ statements. It may be, then again it may not be.

That bit was just me trying to say “You are probably wrong about this as well, but it’s a minor part of your error.” You were.

[Diceman]

I gave blood a few days ago, and I was wondering about the UK questions myself. vCJD sounds like scary stuff. I was somewhat amused by the extent of the Africa disqualifications: “Were you born in Africa? Have you ever lived in Africa? Have you ever had sex with someone from Africa? Were you aware that a place called ‘Africa’ existed?” OK, I made up that last one, but the other three are real. I presume they’re worried mostly about AIDS there.

Also, if you’ve spent more than a couple of years living in Europe, you can’t give blood. I wonder what that was about?