Emerging Infectious Disease ISSN: 1080-6059

Blood Transfusion and Spread of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

Klaus Dietz*

, Günter Raddatz*, Jonathan Wallis†, Norbert Müller‡, Inga Zerr§, Hans-Peter Duerr*, Hans Lefèvre¶, Erhard Seifried#, and Johannes Löwer**

Author affiliations: *University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; †Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; ‡University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany; §University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany; ¶DRK Blood Donor Service West, Hagen, Germany; #DRK Blood Donor Service Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; **Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, Langen, Germany;

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Figure 5

Figure 5. Absolute prevalence of infected donors for an incubation period of 16 (A) and 50 (B) years. The solid black curves show the infected donors without transfusion history. These curves are identical for 0% and 100% infectivity and are independent of donor exclusion. The gray curves show infected donors with transfusion history for 100% (solid) and 0% (dashed) infectivity, respectively, without donor exclusion. The dotted black curves show the effect of donor exclusion starting at the beginning of alimentary risk. Most infected donors have no transfusion history and cannot, therefore, be excluded from blood donation.

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