Blood Safety Recommendations - January 1998
DATE: February 6, 1998
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Stephen D. Nightingale, MD, Executive Secretary
Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability
SUBJECT: Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability
regarding Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies
INFORMATION
The Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability met in Washington,
DC on January 29 and 30, 1998 to consider The Influence of Transmissible Spongiform
Encephalopathies on Blood Safety and Availability. Dr. Robert Rohwer (University
of Maryland), Dr. Lawrence Schonberger (CDC), Dr. Robert Will (National Creutzfeld-Jacob
Disease Surveillance Unit, University of Edinburgh), Dr. Clarence Gibbs (NIH),
Dr. Lola Lopes (University of Iowa), and Dr. Mark Weinstein (FDA) addressed
the Committee, which then made the following recommendations:
1. We recommend that the Public Health Service coordinate an effort to develop
a report within six months that will address issues of existing and emerging
transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The report should make specific
reference to
Food borne transmission, particularly through consumption of central nervous
system tissues;
Iatrogenic transmission; and
Transmission through transfusion of blood components and plasma derivatives.
National and international surveillance of transmission in both humans and
animals, education of providers and the public, needed resources for research,
prevention strategies, and efforts in other countries also should be addressed
in this report.
2. We recommend that the Public Health Service, professional groups, and
patient advocates emphasize the importance of postmortem examination to the
protection of the public health, and that they support the training of physicians
to recognize new pathological patterns of emerging disease in autopsy tissues.
3. We recommend nationwide standardization of procedures
for screening donors at risk for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.
4. We recommend that the National Institute of Health specify
its needs for research and infrastructure support necessary to promote research
on the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, with particular reference
to human and animal tests which can discriminate among these conditions within
each species.
5. We recommend that during the next year the Food and
Drug Administration work with industry and appropriate consumer groups to
relax current Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease guidelines on quarantine and withdrawal
of blood products to the extent necessary to relieve product shortages.
FOLLOW-UP
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