审议团告诉FDA要因“疯牛病”禁止更多的血液制品(上)
WASHINGTON, Jun 29 (Reuters Health) - People that have spent five years or more in Europe from 1980 to the present may soon be banned from donating blood in the US due to the theoretical risk of mad cow disease.
A panel of expert advisors to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 10 to 7 on Thursday to endorse a proposal that would expand the agency's current policy of deferring donors that spent six months or more in the United Kingdom to include the entire European continent.
The proposal would also expand its present deferral policy to include people that spent three or more months in the UK between 1980 to 1996 and people who spent six or more months on any European-based US military instillation south of the Alps. For those military bases north of the Alps, the panel endorsed the deferral of people that spent six or more months there between 1980 through 1990.
The panel's decision was based upon surveillance reports showing that mad cow disease has now spread throughout Europe. In the late 1980s, the disease primarily afflicted cattle herds in the UK. Cases have since been reported in various European nations, including France, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), afflicts cattle. The occurrence of mad cow disease in Europe has become a major concern in the US because scientists have linked BSE to a fatal new variant of a human condition called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which causes the brain to waste away. About 100 people, almost all of them young adults in the UK, have been diagnosed or have died of variant CJD (vCJD).
At present, there is no evidence that the disease can be spread from person to person by blood transfusions. So far, all of the documented cases in Europe have been associated with the consumption of tainted meat. However, animal studies have established at least a theoretical risk., 百拇医药
A panel of expert advisors to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 10 to 7 on Thursday to endorse a proposal that would expand the agency's current policy of deferring donors that spent six months or more in the United Kingdom to include the entire European continent.
The proposal would also expand its present deferral policy to include people that spent three or more months in the UK between 1980 to 1996 and people who spent six or more months on any European-based US military instillation south of the Alps. For those military bases north of the Alps, the panel endorsed the deferral of people that spent six or more months there between 1980 through 1990.
The panel's decision was based upon surveillance reports showing that mad cow disease has now spread throughout Europe. In the late 1980s, the disease primarily afflicted cattle herds in the UK. Cases have since been reported in various European nations, including France, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), afflicts cattle. The occurrence of mad cow disease in Europe has become a major concern in the US because scientists have linked BSE to a fatal new variant of a human condition called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which causes the brain to waste away. About 100 people, almost all of them young adults in the UK, have been diagnosed or have died of variant CJD (vCJD).
At present, there is no evidence that the disease can be spread from person to person by blood transfusions. So far, all of the documented cases in Europe have been associated with the consumption of tainted meat. However, animal studies have established at least a theoretical risk., 百拇医药