Wednesday, November 27, 2013

NHS failed to sterilise surgical instruments contaminated with 'mad cow' disease

 

 
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 2:06 PM
Subject: NHS failed to sterilise surgical instruments contaminated with 'mad cow' disease
 

NHS failed to sterilise surgical instruments contaminated with 'mad cow' disease
 
Regular sterilisation procedure wasn't suitable for the task, says leading specialist Steve Connor Author Biography Science Editor Wednesday 27 November 2013
 
The NHS has failed to use an effective method of sterilising surgical instruments contaminated with the human form of “mad cow” disease because it did not fit in with its established washing procedures, a leading specialist in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) claimed yesterday.
 
The result is that hundreds of people have had their lives blighted by surgery performed with instruments possibly contaminated the prion protein responsible for vCJD said Professor John Collinge, director of the Medical Research Council’s Prion Unit at University College London.
 
Professor Collinge led one of a number of research groups that came up with novel ways of destroying the lethal prion protein, which sticks to the stainless steel of surgical instruments like superglue and can survive the high temperatures of hospital autoclaves.
 
However, in evidence to the House of Commons science and technology committee, Professor Collinge said that he was astonished and disappointed that the Department of Health and the NHS failed to adopt any of the suggestions for decontaminating surgical instruments.
 
“The solution we developed was a combination of enzymes and detergents, if you like a sort of bespoke biological washing powder which very effectively prion-decontaminated metal surfaces,” Professor Collinge said.
 
It was one of several decontamination procedures developed by a number of research groups sponsored by the health department over a decade ago to find ways of making surgical instruments safe, he said.
 
“Neither this nor the other products that were available – I think there were three – have ever been taken up by the NHS. They simply haven’t been used. These issues have been bounced around various committees to my and other peoples’ great frustration,” Professor Collinge said.
 
“It’s perhaps not surprising given that the NHS is notoriously resistant to change and to introducing new methodologies,” he said.
 
“Absolutely nothing has happened despite all this research and all this effort. Currently several hundred people have been notified that they have been exposed to [potentially contaminated] surgical instruments,” he told the committee.
 
“We’re blighting these peoples’ lives and all this has been avoidable for some years by applying this research. I find it quite extraordinary that the system just does not work,” he said.
 
“They’ve had to be notified that they’ve had a significant exposure to prions because they are expected to take precautions. They are not allowed to be blood donors and if they go on to have surgery they have to notify the surgeons that they are high risk individuals.
 
“Needless to say this has a major effect on their lives and needless to say it makes me very angry because all of this was avoidable,” he added.
 
DuPont, an American chemicals company, worked out a way of manufacturing Professor Collinge’s product as a 50C pre-soak for surgical instruments, but because this would involve changing the standard procedures for how medical devices were sterilised, NHS hospitals refused to adopt it, Professor Collinge claimed.
 
“What we had developed was seen to be inconvenient…The NHS didn’t buy a single unit of the product so was it surprising that the manufacturer just walked away?” he said.
 
“It was extraordinary [that] it was discussed in I don’t know how many committees and subcommittees when patients are being put in this position and having their lives blighted. It’s disgraceful,” he told the committee.
 
About 200 hospital patients have been told that they have been exposed to the vCJD prion through instruments that were used on other patients who subsequently died of the brain disease. Three out of the 177 people in the UK who have died of vCJD received contaminated blood, and the rest are assumed to have been infected by meat or meat products contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
 
A spokesman for the Department of Health said that Professor Collinge’s research group has received £18m for various research projects and that DuPont’s prion inactivation product has been reviewed twice by Public Health England’s Rapid Review Panel, which established “gaps” in DuPont’s application.
 
Roland Salmon, the joint chairman of the government’s advisory sub-committee on dangerous pathogens, defended the Department of Health’s stance on introducing new ways of sterilising surgical instruments.
 
“I don’t think it’s fair on the department [of health] to say that nothing was done…they did institute a number of improvements,” Dr Salmon said.
 
“It’s perfectly true they haven’t introduced specific products…the barrier had been I’ve told with having a product composed in such a way that it can be introduced into what is an industrialised process in a cycle,” he said.
 
How vCJD can be contracted
 
Almost all of the 177 cases of vCJD – the human form of “mad cow” disease – have been contracted through eating contaminated meat or meat products before the introduction of controls to limit the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from cattle to people.
 
Three of these deaths, however, are believed to have resulted from blood donors infected with vCJD, but showing no clinical symptoms. There is one further case of a person who died of something else but who was shown at post-mortem to be infected following a blood transfusion.
 
There are fears of secondary infections from asymptomatic carriers in the population. Latest estimates suggest that up to one in 2,000 people in Britain could be carriers of vCJD.
 
Because the prion protein responsible for vCJD is found in a wide range of tissues, such as spleen, tonsils and appendix, the fear is that asymptomatic carriers may spread the infection to others through contaminated surgical instruments and blood donations.
 
 
 
AS usual, the media and the medical community missing the bigger picture. this incident also risk the medical iatrogenic transmission of ALL TSE PRION DISEASE, not just the UKBSEnvCJD only myth.
 
IN fact, there has never been an iatrogenic CJD event with nvCJD, except the 5 documented iatrogenic events with blood and nvCJD.
 
all other medical, surgical transmission was all with sporadic CJD, which is all iatrogenic CJD is, is sporadic CJD, until the the iatrogenic event is documented, proven, and then placed in the academic domain.
 
 
kind regards,
terry
 
 
IATROGENIC
 
 
all iatrogenic cjd is, is sporadic CJD, until route and source of the iatrogenic event that took place, is detected, documented, placed in the academic domain as fact, and recorded, which happens very seldom due to a lot of factors, besides the incubation period, and that be mainly industry. kind of like asbestos and tobacco and the industry there from, they knew in the early 1900’s that they both were killing, and they both had long incubation, and somebody chose not to do anything about if for decades and decades. kind of like what we have here with the TSE prion disease. $$$
 
> In 12 of 15 hospitals with neurosurgical incidents, a decision was made to notify patients of their potential exposure.
 
SO, X number of patients, from 3 hospitals, where
 
''exposure to potentially CJD-contaminated instruments ''
 
took place on these patients, the final decision NOT to tell those folks about the potential exposure to the CJD TSE prion
 
insane, thus, the TSE prion agent continues to spread. ...please see further comments here ;
 
 
 
 
Saturday, November 16, 2013
 
Management of neurosurgical instruments and patients exposed to creutzfeldt-jakob disease 2013 December
 
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol.
 
 
 
 
Thursday, November 14, 2013
 
Prion diseases in humans: Oral and dental implications
 
 
 
 
Saturday, November 2, 2013
 
Recommendation of the Swiss Expert Committee for Biosafety on the classification of activities using prion genes and prion protein January 2013
 
 
 
 
BONE GRINDING, POTENTIAL AEROSOLS TRANSMISSION, TSE PRION ???
 
Aerosols

Prion transmission is usually not considered to be airborne like influenza or chicken pox. But we and others recently have found that prions can also be efficiently transmitted to mice through aerosols [5], [6]. Although aerosol-transmitted prions have never been found under natural conditions, this finding highlights the necessity of revising the current prion-related biosafety guidelines and health standards in diagnostic and scientific laboratories being potentially confronted with prion-infected materials.
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1002651
 
 
 
Efficient mucosal transmission of CWD in deer has been demonstrated by oral, nasal, aerosol, and indirect contact exposure.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*** PRION2013 ***
 
 
Sunday, August 25, 2013
 
Prion2013 Chronic Wasting Disease CWD risk factors, ***humans, domestic cats, blood, and mother to offspring transmission
 



Thursday, December 29, 2011

Aerosols An underestimated vehicle for transmission of prion diseases?

PRION
www.landesbioscience.com



Monday, November 26, 2012

Aerosol Transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease in White-tailed Deer
http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2012/11/aerosol-transmission-of-chronic-wasting.html

 
 
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
 
Transmission of multiple system atrophy prions to transgenic mice
 
 
 
 
 
TSS
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