Why British People Can't Donate Blood in America

On December 22nd 1984 cow number 133 on a farm in England Sussex County began displaying head tremors and a loss of coordination where it died a few months later on February 11 1985 where it wasn’t until September of that year when a government pathologist determined that cow number 133 died from spongiform encephalopathy later called bovine spongiform encephalopathy or more commonly mad cow disease.

Scientists on the spongiform encephalopathy advisory committee announced a possible link between the disease in cows and a similar disease in humans sparking numerous efforts to curb its spread from banning British beef exports to culling more than four million cows where the outbreak eventually reached a peak infection rate in 1993 of 0.3 percent of the UK national herd.

In a study was published where researchers tested over 32,000 appendices from British people for the disease and they worryingly found that one in every 2,000 people in the UK is carrying the abnormal protein that causes the disease but are not showing any symptoms at least not yet because an estimated 31,000 people are still carriers of the disease.

Preventative measures like blood donation bans are still in place to avoid transmission where in the US if you spent more than three months in the UK from 1980 to 1996 you can’t donate blood but as the pandemic rages on blood shortages are dire where hospitals are struggling to have enough on hand.

When BSE is transmitted to humans it’s called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or vCJD where while early predictions estimated the outbreak would kill thousands to tens of thousands of people there have only been 231 human fatalities worldwide the majority within the UK.

vCJD is just one of four major types of CJD which are classified by how it’s contracted where in addition to variant CJD there is sporadic CJD the cause of which is still unknown where familial or inherited CJD occurs when someone inherits an abnormal protein gene from their parent and iatrogenic CJD occurs accidentally in the medical setting where one famous occurrence took place between 1958 and 1985 when thousands of children were injected with human growth hormone collected from deceased donors who were unknowingly infected with CJD.

CJD is caused by an abnormal infectious protein in the brain called a prion where prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein inducing them to change their conformation as well producing a chain reaction that propagates the disease and generates new infectious material where this is unique in the disease world where before prions were discovered it was believed that all pathogens like bacteria or viruses had to contain nucleic acids to enable them to reproduce like DNA or RNA where the discovery of prions opened our eyes to a totally new mechanism of disease.

Proteins are a very important part of our body’s chemistry and are responsible for the structure function and regulation of our tissues and organs where they are large molecules made up of hundreds to thousands of organic compounds called amino acids which are attached in long chains or strings where these strings then fold into a 3D shape where this protein folding is key as each protein forms a specific shape that allows it to perform its specific function but if a mistake occurs they can misfold or fold incorrectly which is how an abnormal prion occurs.

The other way prions devastate the brain is by creating holes where as they build up they cause brain cells to die which releases more prions and so on where in areas where brain cells are killed holes are created that make the brain sponge-like where this type of brain damage causes symptoms similar to other neurological disorders like dementia.

In variant CJD typically psychological symptoms that affect a person’s behavior and personality develop first where in a few months neurological symptoms develop such as problems with coordination slurred speech numbness dizziness and vision problems where over time symptoms worsen until the patient is bedridden completely unaware of their surroundings and can’t communicate where the disease always progresses to death.

It took some years of research to nail down just how BSE spread from cow to cow where eventually they identified the source as their food where at the time cows were often fed the remains of other cows so if they ate infected meat they too became infected where this led to a spread of BSE between cows eventually reaching a peak infection rate in 1993 of 0.3 percent where the answer banned the feeding of meat and bone mix to farm animals.

Eating infected beef isn’t the only way humans can get vCJD and this is where the blood bands come in where there were four cases in the UK where a patient contracted it after receiving a blood transfusion where quickly blood donation bans were put in place in countries like the US Canada and Australia where people who have spent several months in the UK in the 80s and 90s are not allowed to donate blood where this seems like a broad stroke to ban millions of possible donors from just four instances of blood transmission.

Researchers have developed a method to amplify the prions in blood samples called protein misfolding cyclic amplification or PMCA where it works by taking advantage of the infectious prions natural tendency to convert normal proteins into an abnormal state where they did this by combining healthy proteins with a small amount of infectious prions and agitating the mixture with sound waves where the sound waves broke up the chunks of infectious prions helping them to meet and infect normal proteins where in a 2016 study it was found to correctly identify those with or without a hundred percent of the time where it can even detect it in patients who aren’t showing any symptoms where in another study published in 2016 their tests detected vCJD prions in two patients 1.3 and 2.6 years before they began showing any signs of the disease.

Some scientists think it’s time to rethink the bans on blood donations especially with the implementation of safety measures like leukoreduction a process which removes white blood cells from blood since white blood cells sometimes carry pathogens where methods like this have already helped to change the donation regulations in many countries around those who are at high risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

Luckily changes have begun where in 2019 the Irish Blood Transfusion Service lifted their ban enabling some 10,000 individuals to now donate and in 2020 the FDA lifted their ban on US military veterans who served in Europe now allowing 4.4 million more people to donate where with more testing and trials soon this catch-all ban should be lifted in the US saving hundreds of thousands of lives with much needed blood.