The risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease among UK patients with bleeding disorders, known to have received potentially contaminated plasma products
The risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease among UK patients with bleeding disorders, known to have received potentially contaminated plasma products
S. M. A. ZAMAN1, F. G. H. HILL2,9, B. PALMER3, C. M. MILLAR4,9, A. BONE1, A. M. MOLESWORTH1, N. CONNOR1, C. A. LEE5, G. DOLAN6, J. T. WILDE7,9, O. N. GILL1, M. MAKRIS8,9
Article first published online: 23 FEB 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2516.2011.02508.x
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Keywords: haemophilia; inherited bleeding disorders; risk assessment; UK plasma products; variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Summary. The risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from potentially infected plasma products remains unquantified. This risk has been assessed for 787 UK patients with an inherited bleeding disorder prospectively followed-up for 10–20 years through the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO) Surveillance Study. These patients had been treated with any of 25 ‘implicated’ clotting factor batches from 1987 to 1999, which included in their manufacture, plasma from eight donors who subsequently developed clinical vCJD. Variant CJD infectivity of these batches was estimated using plasma fraction infectivity estimates and batch-manufacturing data. Total potential vCJD infectivity received by each patient has been estimated by cumulating estimated infectivity from all doses received during their lifetime. Of 787 patients, 604 (77%) were followed-up for over 13 years following exposure to an implicated batch. For these 604 patients, the estimated vCJD risk is =1% for 595, =50% for 164 and 100% for 51. This is additional to background UK population risk due to dietary exposure. Of 604 patients, 94 (16%) received implicated batches linked to donors who developed clinical vCJD within 6 months of their donations. One hundred and fifty-one (25%) had received their first dose when under 10 years of age. By 1st January 2009, none of these patients had developed clinical vCJD. The absence of clinical vCJD cases in this cohort to date suggests that either plasma fraction infectivity estimates are overly precautionary, or the incubation period is longer for this cohort than for implicated cellular blood product recipients. Further follow-up of this cohort is needed.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2516.2011.02508.x/abstract
Atypical BSE (BASE) Transmitted from Asymptomatic Aging Cattle to a Primate
Emmanuel E. Comoy1*, Cristina Casalone2, Nathalie Lescoutra-Etchegaray1, Gianluigi Zanusso3, Sophie Freire1, Dominique Marcé1, Frédéric Auvré1, Marie-Magdeleine Ruchoux1, Sergio Ferrari3, Salvatore Monaco3, Nicole Salès4, Maria Caramelli2, Philippe Leboulch1,5, Paul Brown1, Corinne I. Lasmézas4, Jean-Philippe Deslys1
1 Institute of Emerging Diseases and Innovative Therapies, CEA, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, 2 Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Piemonte, Turin, Italy, 3 Policlinico G.B. Rossi, Verona, Italy, 4 Scripps Florida, Jupiter, Florida, United States of America, 5 Genetics Division, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Abstract
Background Human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) results from foodborne transmission of prions from slaughtered cattle with classical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (cBSE). Atypical forms of BSE, which remain mostly asymptomatic in aging cattle, were recently identified at slaughterhouses throughout Europe and North America, raising a question about human susceptibility to these new prion strains.
Methodology/Principal
Findings Brain homogenates from cattle with classical BSE and atypical (BASE) infections were inoculated intracerebrally into cynomolgus monkeys (Macacca fascicularis), a non-human primate model previously demonstrated to be susceptible to the original strain of cBSE. The resulting diseases were compared in terms of clinical signs, histology and biochemistry of the abnormal prion protein (PrPres). The single monkey infected with BASE had a shorter survival, and a different clinical evolution, histopathology, and prion protein (PrPres) pattern than was observed for either classical BSE or vCJD-inoculated animals. Also, the biochemical signature of PrPres in the BASE-inoculated animal was found to have a higher proteinase K sensitivity of the octa-repeat region. We found the same biochemical signature in three of four human patients with sporadic CJD and an MM type 2 PrP genotype who lived in the same country as the infected bovine.
Conclusion/Significance
Our results point to a possibly higher degree of pathogenicity of BASE than classical BSE in primates and also raise a question about a possible link to one uncommon subset of cases of apparently sporadic CJD. Thus, despite the waning epidemic of classical BSE, the occurrence of atypical strains should temper the urge to relax measures currently in place to protect public health from accidental contamination by BSE-contaminated products.
Citation: Comoy EE, Casalone C, Lescoutra-Etchegaray N, Zanusso G, Freire S, et al. (2008) Atypical BSE (BASE) Transmitted from Asymptomatic Aging Cattle to a Primate. PLoS ONE 3(8): e3017. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003017
Editor: Neil Mabbott, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Received: April 24, 2008; Accepted: August 1, 2008; Published: August 20, 2008
Copyright: © 2008 Comoy et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This work has been supported by the Network of Excellence NeuroPrion.
Competing interests: CEA owns a patent covering the BSE diagnostic tests commercialized by the company Bio-Rad.
* E-mail: emmanuel.comoy@cea.fr
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0003017
Session I - Prions: Structure, Strain and Detection (II)
Searching for BASE Strain Signature in Sporadic Creutzfedlt-Jakob Disease
Gianluigi Zanusso
Department of Neurological and Visual Sciences, Section of Clinical Neurology University of Verona, Verona, Italy.
Bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE) is a newly recognized form of bovine prion disease, which was originally detected in Italy in 2004 as an effect of active surveillance. BASE or BSE L-type (L is referred to the lower electrophoretic PrPSc migration than classical BSE) has now been reported in several countries, including Japan. All field cases of BASE were older than 8 years and neurologically normal at the time of slaughtered. By experimental transmission, we defined the disease phenotype of cattle BASE, which is quite distinct from that seen in typical BSE and characterized by mental dullness and amyotrophy. Surprisingly, following intraspecies and interspecies transmission the incubation period of BASE was shorter than BSE. The relatively easy transmission of BASE isolate as well as the molecular similarity with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) have raised concern regarding its potential passage to humans. Tg humanized mice Met/Met at codon 129 challenged with both BSE and BASE isolates, showed a resistance to BSE but a susceptibility to BASE at a 60% rate; in addition, BASE-inoculated Cynomolgus (129 Met/Met) had shorter incubation periods than BSE-inoculated primates. In this study we compared the biochemical properties of PrPSc in Cynomolgus and in TgHu Met/Met mice challenged with BSE and BASE strains, by conventional SDS-PAGE analysis and 2D separation. The results obtained disclose distinct conformational changes in PrPSc, which are dependent on the inoculated host but not on the codon 129 genotype.
This work was supported by Neuroprion contract n. FOOD CT 2004 -506579 (NOE)
http://www.istitutoveneto.it/prion_09/Abstracts_09.pdf
P02.35
Molecular Features of the Protease-resistant Prion Protein (PrPres) in H-type BSE
Biacabe, A-G1; Jacobs, JG2; Gavier-Widén, D3; Vulin, J1; Langeveld, JPM2; Baron, TGM1 1AFSSA, France; 2CIDC-Lelystad, Netherlands; 3SVA, Sweden
Western blot analyses of PrPres accumulating in the brain of BSE-infected cattle have demonstrated 3 different molecular phenotypes regarding to the apparent molecular masses and glycoform ratios of PrPres bands. We initially described isolates (H-type BSE) essentially characterized by higher PrPres molecular mass and decreased levels of the diglycosylated PrPres band, in contrast to the classical type of BSE. This type is also distinct from another BSE phenotype named L-type BSE, or also BASE (for Bovine Amyloid Spongiform Encephalopathy), mainly characterized by a low representation of the diglycosylated PrPres band as well as a lower PrPres molecular mass. Retrospective molecular studies in France of all available BSE cases older than 8 years old and of part of the other cases identified since the beginning of the exhaustive surveillance of the disease in 20001 allowed to identify 7 H-type BSE cases, among 594 BSE cases that could be classified as classical, L- or H-type BSE. By Western blot analysis of H-type PrPres, we described a remarkable specific feature with antibodies raised against the C-terminal region of PrP that demonstrated the existence of a more C-terminal cleaved form of PrPres (named PrPres#2 ), in addition to the usual PrPres form (PrPres #1). In the unglycosylated form, PrPres #2 migrates at about 14 kDa, compared to 20 kDa for PrPres #1. The proportion of the PrPres#2 in cattle seems to by higher compared to the PrPres#1. Furthermore another PK-resistant fragment at about 7 kDa was detected by some more N-terminal antibodies and presumed to be the result of cleavages of both N- and C-terminal parts of PrP. These singular features were maintained after transmission of the disease to C57Bl/6 mice. The identification of these two additional PrPres fragments (PrPres #2 and 7kDa band) reminds features reported respectively in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and in Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker (GSS) syndrome in humans.
http://www.neuroprion.com/pdf_docs/conferences/prion2007/abstract_book.pdf
P26 TRANSMISSION OF ATYPICAL BOVINE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY (BSE) IN HUMANIZED MOUSE MODELS
Liuting Qing1, Fusong Chen1, Michael Payne1, Wenquan Zou1, Cristina Casalone2, Martin Groschup3, Miroslaw Polak4, Maria Caramelli2, Pierluigi Gambetti1, Juergen Richt5*, and Qingzhong Kong1 1Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA; 2CEA, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale, Italy; 3Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Germany; 4National Veterinary Research Institute, Poland; 5Kansas State University, Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology Department, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA. *Previous address: USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA 50010, USA
Classical BSE is a world-wide prion disease in cattle, and the classical BSE strain (BSE-C) has led to over 200 cases of clinical human infection (variant CJD). Two atypical BSE strains, BSE-L (also named BASE) and BSE-H, have been discovered in three continents since 2004. The first case of naturally occurring BSE with mutated bovine PrP gene (termed BSE-M) was also found in 2006 in the USA. The transmissibility and phenotypes of these atypical BSE strains/isolates in humans were unknown. We have inoculated humanized transgenic mice with classical and atypical BSE strains (BSE-C, BSE-L, BSE-H) and the BSE-M isolate. We have found that the atypical BSE-L strain is much more virulent than the classical BSE-C. The atypical BSE-H strain is also transmissible in the humanized transgenic mice with distinct phenotype, but no transmission has been observed for the BSE-M isolate so far.
III International Symposium on THE NEW PRION BIOLOGY: BASIC SCIENCE, DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY 2 - 4 APRIL 2009, VENEZIA (ITALY)
http://www.istitutoveneto.it/prion_09/Abstracts_09.pdf
PRION 2010
International Prion Congress: From agent to disease September 8–11, 2010 Salzburg, Austria
PPo3-11:
Blood Transmission Experiments in Primates: Squirrel Monkeys (the Baxter Study)
Paul Brown, James Ironside, Susan Gibson, Robert G. Will, Thomas R. Kreil and Christian Abee
Plasma and buffy coat samples from 2 sCJD and 3 vCJD cases were inoculated i.c. and i.v. into a total of 21 squirrel monkeys. Pooled brain from the 3 vCJD patients titered 106 LD50/g (i.c.). Whole blood from each of 4 monkeys inoculated with 10% vCJD brain homogenate was transfused i.v. to individual recipient monkeys at approximately 3-month intervals during the incubation and clinical stages of disease in the donor animals. Plasma, RBC’s, platelets, and purified leukocytes from 6 chimpanzees infected with either human sCJD or GSS were inoculated i.c. and i.v. into 12 monkeys. In the entire group of monkeys inoculated with blood or blood components, only a single neuropathologically-verified transmission occurred within a 5-year observation period, in an animal inoculated with leukocytes from a pair of GSS-infected chimpanzee.
Conclusions. In a primate model highly susceptible to TSE (the squirrel monkey), infectivity was not detected (<10 i.c. LD50/ml) in plasma or buffy coat from 2 sCJD and 3 vCJD patients, or in whole blood from 1st passage vCJD in monkeys. We did, however, detect infectivity in one monkey inoculated with purified leukocytes from chimpanzee-passaged GSS, and observed what appeared to be a ‘triggering’ of symptomatic disease by physiological stress in chimpanzees subjected to plasmapheresis under general anaesthesia.
PPo4-20:
All Clinically Relevant Components, from Prion Infected Blood Donors, can Cause Disease Following a Single Transfusion
Sandra McCutcheon,1 Fiona E. Houston,2 Anthony R. Alejo-Blanco,1 Christopher de Wolf,1 Boon Chin Tan,1 Anthony Smith,3 Nora Hunter,1 Valerie S. Hornsey,4 Ian R. MacGregor,4 Christopher V. Prowse,4 Marc Turner5 and Jean C. Manson1
1The Roslin Institute; Roslin, Edinburgh UK; 2The University of Glasgow; Glasgow, UK; 3The Institute for Animal Health; Compton, Berkshire UK; 4National Science Laboratory; Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS); Edinburgh, UK; 5University of Edinburgh and SNBTS; Edinburgh, UK
Key words: blood, prion, BSE, transfusion
Introduction. To date, there have been over 220 cases of vCJD worldwide, likely acquired directly from bovine sources. There is concern that human to human transmission from individuals sub-clinically infected with vCJD may amplify/prolong a vCJD epidemic. The area of greatest concern in this respect is blood transfusion, of which there have been several reported cases. Here we examined which blood components are likely to pose the greatest risk of transmitting vCJD via blood transfusion using our sheep BSE model.
Results. 67% of donors have been confirmed as having BSE. We have recorded 25 positive transmissions of BSE following transfusion of non-leucodepleted blood components and 2 transmissions resulting from the transfusion of leucoreduced red cells and leucoreduced plasma.
Conclusion. We show that all components, prepared to the same criteria as used in human medicine, contain sufficient levels of infectivity to cause disease in recipients following a single blood transfusion. Leucoreduction of plasma and red cell concentrates does not remove infectivity. These data indicate the importance of devising appropriate control measures to minimise the risk of human to human transmission of vCJD by blood transfusion. Department of Health, UK (007/0162).
Methods. Sheep were orally infected with bovine BSE brain homogenate. We collected two full-sized donations of whole blood, before the onset of clinical signs. The following components were transfused into naive recipients: whole blood, red cell concentrates buffy coat, plasma and platelet units. We also transfused leucoreduced plasma, platelets and red cells. We collected a unit of whole blood from selected primary recipients for transfusion into secondary recipients.
PPo4-21:
The Risk of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) Among UK Patients with Bleeding Disorders, Known to Have Received Clotting Factors Linked to Donors who Subsequently Developed vCJD
Syed M.A. Zaman,1 Nicky Connor,1 Noel Gill,1 Carolyn M. Millar,2,6 Mike Makris,3,6 Benedict Palmer4 and Frank G.H. Hill5,6
1CJD Section, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections; London, UK; 2Department of Haematology; Imperial College; London, UK; 3University of Sheffield; Royal Hallamshire Hospital; Sheffield, UK; 4National Haemophilia Database; Manchester, UK; 5The Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Birmingham, UK; 6Members of the Transfusion Transmitted Infection Working Party of the UK; Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO); Sheffield, South Yorkshire UK
The risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) from potentially infected plasma products remains un-quantified. This risk has been assessed for 787 UK bleeding disorder patients prospectively followed-up for 10–20 years through the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO) Surveillance Study. These patients were treated with any of 25 ‘implicated’ clotting factor batches from 1987–1999, which included in their manufacture plasma from eight donors who subsequently developed vCJD. VCJD infectivity of these batches was estimated using plasma fraction infectivity estimates and batch manufacturing data. The quantity of implicated batches received by these patients was obtained. Total vCJD infectivity received by each patient has been estimated by cumulating infectivity from all doses received in their lifetime. Of 787 patients, 604 (77%) were followed-up for over 13 years since exposure to an implicated batch. By end 2008, none of these patients had developed vCJD. For these 604 patients, the estimated vCJD risk is <1% for 595, <50% for 164, and 100% for 51. This is additional to the background UK population risk due to dietary exposure. Of 604 patients, 94 (16%) received implicated batches linked to donors who developed vCJD within six months of their donations. 151 (25%) had received their first dose under 10 years of age. The absence of clinical vCJD cases in this cohort to date suggests that either plasma fraction infectivity estimates are overly precautionary, or the incubation period is longer for this cohort than for implicated cellular blood product recipients. Further follow up of this cohort is needed to answer these questions.
http://www.prion2010.org/bilder/prion_2010_program_latest_w_posters_4_.pdf?139&PHPSESSID=a30a38202cfec579000b77af81be3099
FC5.1.1
Transmission Results in Squirrel Monkeys Inoculated with Human sCJD, vCJD, and GSS Blood Specimens: the Baxter Study
Brown, P1; Gibson, S2; Williams, L3; Ironside, J4; Will, R4; Kreil, T5; Abee, C3 1Fondation Alliance BioSecure, France; 2University of South Alabama, USA; 3University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA; 4Western General Hospital, UK; 5Baxter BioSience, Austria
Background: Rodent and sheep models of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) have documented blood infectivity in both the pre-clinical and clinical phases of disease. Results in a (presumably more appropriate) non-human primate model have not been reported.
Objective: To determine if blood components (red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma) from various forms of human TSE are infectious.
Methods: Blood components were inoculated intra-cerebrally (0.1 ml) and intravenously (0.5 ml) into squirrel monkeys from 2 patients with sporadic Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease (sCJD) and 3 patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Additional monkeys were inoculated with buffy coat or plasma samples from chimpanzees infected with either sCJD or Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease (GSS). Animals were monitored for a period of 5 years, and all dying or sacrificed animals had post-mortem neuropathological examinations and Western blots to determine the presence or absence of the misfolded prion protein (PrPTSE).
Results: No transmissions occurred in any of the animals inoculated with blood components from patients with sporadic or variant CJD. All donor chimpanzees (sCJD and GSS) became symptomatic within 6 weeks of their pre-clinical phase plasmapheresis, several months earlier than the expected onset of illness. One monkey inoculated with purified leukocytes from a pre-clinical GSS chimpanzee developed disease after 36 months.
Conclusion: No infectivity was found in small volumes of blood components from 4 patients with sporadic CJD and 3 patients with variant CJD. ***However, a single transmission from a chimpanzee-passaged strain of GSS shows that infectivity may be present in leukocytes, and the shock of general anaesthesia and plasmspheresis appears to have triggered the onset of illness in pre-clinical donor chimpanzees.
FC5.1.2
Interim Transmission Results in Cynomolgus Macaques Inoculated with BSE and vCJD Blood Specimens
Lasmezas, C1; Lescoutra, N2; Comoy, E2; Holznagel, E3; Loewer, J3; Motzkus, D4; Hunsmann, G4; Ingrosso, L5; Bierke, P6; Pocchiari, M5; Ironside, J7; Will, R7; Deslys, JP2 1Scripps Florida, Infectology, USA; 2CEA, France; 3PEI, Germany; 4DPZ, Germany; 5Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Italy; 6SMI, Sweden; 7CJD Surveillance Unit, UK
BSE and vCJD transmitted to cynomolgus macaques reproduce many features of human vCJD, including clinical symptoms, neuropathological hallmarks of vCJD, PrPres electrophoretical pattern and, most importantly, the wide distribution of infectivity in peripheral organs. The latter characteristic distinguishes vCJD from sCJD in both humans and cynomolgus macaques, and prompted us to use this non-human primate model for further investigations of vCJD and its risk for human health. The occurrence of four vCJD infections in humans transfused with blood from patients who later developed vCJD has raised concern about blood transfusion safety in countries with vCJD. In this collaborative European study, we investigated the infectivity of blood components and whole blood administered by intracerebral (ic) and intravenous (iv) routes. Buffy-coat and whole blood was inoculated by ic and iv route, respectively, from two vCJD patients and from two clinical vCJD-inoculated macaques. Transfusions were also performed from whole blood and blood leucodepleted according to hospital practice standards from two clinical BSE inoculated macaques. Blood infectivity during the preclinical phase is being examined in orally infected macaques. Whole blood was collected and transfused from one such animal two years after oral challenge, whereas buffy-coat and plasma from two animals at 2 and 4.5 years post-challenge, respectively, have been inoculated by the ic route. This is an ongoing study in which recipient animals continue to be observed at various times post-inoculation. So far, we have had one positive transmission in one animal transfused 65 months earlier with 40 ml of whole blood from a vCJD macaque (the characteristics of the disease in this animal will be shown in a separate poster by E. Comoy). This positive transmission reproduces transfusion transmission of vCJD in humans, with an incubation of 5.5 years compatible with incubation periods observed in humans.
http://www.prion2007.com/pdf/Prion%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf
Saturday, September 5, 2009
TSEAC MEETING FEBRUARY 12, 2004 THE BAXTER STUDY GSS
snip...
But the first thing is our own study, and as I mentioned, it's a Baxter primate study, and those are the major participants. And the goal was twofold, and here is the first one: to see whether CJD, either sporadic or familial -- actually it turns out to be the familial CJD is incorrect. It really should be the Fukuoka strain of Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease. So it's really GSS instead of familial CJD -- when passaged through chimps into squirrel monkeys using purified blood components, very pure blood components.
So this addresses the question that was raised just recently about whether or not red cell infectivity that's been found in rodents is really in the red cells or is it contaminated.
We prepared these samples with exquisite care, and they are ultra-ultra-ultra purified. There's virtually no contamination of any of the components that we looked at ? platelets, red cells, plasma, white cells -- with any other component.
These are a sort of new set of slides, and what I've tried to do is make them less complicated and more clear, but I'm afraid I haven't included the build. So you'll just have to try and follow what I explain with this little red pointer.
There were three initial patients. Two of them had sporadic CJD. One of them had Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome. Brain tissue from each individual patient was inoculated intracerebrally into a pair of chimpanzees. All right?
From those chimps, either plasma or ultra purified -- in fact, everything is ultra-purified. I'll just talk about purified plasma, purified white cells -- were inoculated intracerebrally and intravenously to get the maximum amount of infective load into a pair of squirrel monkeys.
The same thing was done for each of these three sets. This monkey died from non-CJD causes at 34 months post inoculation.
Let me go back for a second. I didn't point out the fact that these were not sacrificed at this point. These chimpanzees were apheresed at 27 weeks when they were still asymptomatic. In this instance, we apheresed them terminally when they were symptomatic.
And before I forget, I want to mention just a little sidelight of this. Chimpanzees in our experience -- and I think we may be the only people that have ever inoculated chimpanzees, and that's no longer a possibility, so this was 20, 30 years ago -- the shortest incubation period of any chimpanzee that we have ever seen with direct intracerebral inoculation is 13 months.
So we chose 27 weeks, which is about seven months, and incidentally typically the incubation period is more like 16 or 18 months. The shortest was 13 months. We chose the 27th week, which is about six and a half months, thinking that this would be about halfway through the incubation period, which we wanted to check for the presence or absence of infectivity.
But within four weeks after the apheresis, which was conducted under general anesthesia for three or four hours apiece, every single one of the six chimpanzees became symptomatic. That is another experiment that I would love to conclude, perhaps because this is simply not heard of, and it very much smells like we triggered clinical illness. We didn't trigger the disease, but it certainly looks like we triggered symptomatic disease at a point that was much earlier than one would have possibly expected.
Maybe it will never be done because it would probably open the floodgates of litigation. There's no end of little things that you can find out from CJD patients after the fact. For example, the neighbor's dog comes over, barks at a patient, makes him fall down, and three weeks later he gets CJD. So you have a lawsuit against the neighbor.
I mean, this is not an unheard of matter, but I do think that physical stress in the form of anesthesia and four hours of whatever goes on with anesthesia, low blood pressure, sometimes a little hypoxemia looks like it's a bad thing.
So here we have the 31st week. All of the chimps are symptomatic, and here what we did was in order to make the most use of the fewest monkeys, which is always a problem in primate research, we took these same three patients and these six chimps. Only now we pooled these components; that is to say, we pooled the plasma from all six chimps. We pooled ultra-purified white cells from all six chimps because here we wanted to see whether or not we could distinguish a difference between intracerebral route of infection and intravenous route of infection.
With respect to platelets and red blood cells, we did not follow that. We inoculated both intracerebral and intravenously, as we had done earlier because nobody has any information on whether or not platelets and red cells are infectious, and so we wanted again to get the maximum.
This is an IV versus IC goal. This one, again, is just getting the maximum load in to see whether there is, in fact, any infectivity in pure platelets, in pure red cells.
And of all of the above, the only transmission of disease related to the inoculation was in a squirrel monkey that received pure leukocytes from the presymptomatic apheresis. So that goes some way to address the question as to whether or not it's a matter of contamination. To date the red cells have not been -- the monkeys that receive red cells have not been observed for more than a year because that was a later experiment.
So we still can't say about red cells, but we're about four and a half years down the road now, and we have a single transmission from purified leukocytes, nothing from plasma and nothing from platelets.
That was the first part of the experiment. The second part was undertaken with the cooperation of Bob Will and others supplying material to us. These were a couple of human, sporadic cases of CJD and three variant cases of CJD from which we obtained buffy coat and plasma separated in a normal way. That is, these are not purified components.
The two cases of sporadic CJD, the plasma was pooled from both patients. The buffy coat was pooled from both patients, and then inoculated intracerebrally and intravenously into three squirrel monkeys each. This is a non-CJD death five years after inoculation. The other animals are still alive.
For variant CJD we decided not to pool. It was more important to eliminate the possibility that there was just a little bit of infectivity in one patient that would have been diluted to extinction, if you like, by mixing them if it were to so occur with two patients, for example, who did not have infectivity. So each one of these was done individually, but the principle was the same: plasma and buffy coat for each patient was inoculated into either two or three squirrel monkeys. This is, again, a non-CJD related death.
In addition to that, we inoculated rain as a positive control from the two sporadic disease cases of human -- from the two human sporadic cases at ten to the minus one and ten to the minus three dilutions. We have done this many, many times in the past with other sporadic patients. So we knew what to expect, and we got exactly what we did expect, namely, after an incubation period not quite two years, all four monkeys developed disease at this dilution and at the minus three dilution, not a whole lot of difference between the two.
Now, these are the crucial monkeys because each one of these monkeys every three to four months was bled and the blood transfused into a new healthy monkey, but the same monkey all the time. So this monkey, for example, would have received in the course of 21 months about six different transfusions of blood from this monkey into this monkey, similarly with this pair, this pair, and this pair. So you can call these buddies. This is sort of the term that was used. These monkeys are still alive.
In the same way, the three human variant CJD specimens, brain, were inoculated into four monkeys, and again, each one of these monkeys has been repeatedly bled at three to four month intervals and that blood transfused into a squirrel monkey, the same one each time. Ideally we would love to have taken bleeding at three months and inoculated a monkey and then let him go, watch him, and then done the same thing at six months. It would have increased the number of monkeys eightfold and just unacceptably expensive. So we did the best we could.
That, again, is a non-CJD death, as is this.
This was of interest mainly to show that the titer of infectivity in brain from variant CJD is just about the same as it from sporadic. We didn't do a minus five and a minus seven in sporadic because we have an enormous experience already with sporadic disease in squirrel monkeys, and we know that this is exactly what happens. It disappears at about ten to the minus five. So the brain titer in monkeys receiving human vCJD is identical to the brain titer in monkeys that have been inoculated with sporadic CJD.
That's the experiment. All of the monkeys in aqua are still alive. They are approaching a five-year observation period, and I think the termination of this experiment will now need to be discussed very seriously in view of a probable six-year incubation period in the U.K. case. The original plan was to terminate the experiment after five years of observation with the understanding that ideally you would keep these animals for their entire life span, which is what we used to do when had unlimited space, money, and facilities. We can't do that anymore.
It's not cheap, but I think in view of the U.K. case, it will be very important to think very seriously about allowing at least these buddies and the buddies from the sporadic CJD to go on for several more years because although you might think that the U.K. case has made experimental work redundant, in point of fact, anything that bears on the risk of this disease in humans is worthwhile knowing, and one of the things we don't know is frequency of infection. We don't know whether this case in the U.K. is going to be unique and never happen again or whether all 13 or 14 patients have received blood components are ultimately going to die. Let's hope not.
The French primate study is primarily directed now by Corinne Lasmezas. As you know, the late Dominique Dromont was the original, originally initiated this work, and they have very active primate laboratory in France, and I'm only going to show two very simple slides to summarize what they did.
The first one is simply to show you the basis of their statement that the IV route of infection looks to be pretty efficient because we all know that the intracerebral route of infection is the most efficient, and if you look at this where they inoculated the same infective load either intracerebrally or intravenously, the incubation periods were not substantially different, which suggests but doesn't prove, but doesn't prove that the route of infection is pretty efficient.
Lower doses of brain material given IV did extend the incubation period and presumably it's because of the usual dose response phenomenon that you see in any infectious disease.
With a whopping dose of brain orally, the incubation period was even lower. Again, just one more example of inefficiency of the route of infection and the necessity to use more infective material to get transmissions.
And they also have blood inoculated IV which is on test, and the final slide or at least the penultimate slide shows you what they have on test and the time of observation, that taken human vCJD and like us inoculated buffy coat, they've also inoculated whole blood which we did not do.
So to a great extent their studies are complementary to ours and makes it all worthwhile.
We have about -- oh, I don't know -- a one to two-year lead time on the French, but they're still getting into pretty good observation periods. Here's three-plus years.
They have variant CJD adapted to the macaque. That is to say this one was passaged in macaque monkeys, the cynomolgus, and they did the same thing. Again, we're talking about a study here in which like ours there are no transmissions. I mean, we have that one transmission from leukocytes, and that's it.
Here is a BSE adapted to the macaque. Whole blood, and then they chose to inoculate leukodepleted whole blood, in both instances IV. Here they are out to five years without a transmission.
And then finally oral dosing of the macaque, which had been infected with -- which was infected with BSE, but a macaque passaged BSE, whole blood buffy coat and plasma, all by the IC route, and they're out to three years.
So with the single exception of the leukocyte transmission from our chimp that was inoculated with a sporadic case of CJD or -- excuse me -- with a GSS, Gerstmann-Straussler, in neither our study nor the French study, which are not yet completed have we yet seen a transmission.
And I will just close with a little cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post that I modified slightly lest you get too wound up with these questions of the risk from blood. This should be a "corrective."
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Thanks.
Questions?
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Yes. Any questions for Dr. Brown? Dr. Linden.
DR. LINDEN: I just want to make sure I understand your study design correctly. When you mention the monkeys that have the IV and IC inoculations, the individual monkeys had both or --
DR. BROWN: Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly right.
DR. LINDEN: So an individual monkey had both of those as opposed to some monkeys had one and some had the other?
DR. BROWN: Correct, correct. Where IC and IV are put down together was IC plus IV into a given monkey.
DR. LINDEN: Into a given monkey. Okay.
And the IC inoculations, where were those given?
DR. BROWN: Right parietal cortex, Southern Alabama.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Oh, it can't be that clear. Yeah, here, Pierluigi.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Epstein.
DR. BROWN: Pierluigi always damns me with feint praise. He always says that's a very interesting study, but. I'm waiting for that, Pierluigi.
I think Jay Epstein --
DR. GAMBETTI: I will say that there's an interesting study and will say, but I just --
(Laughter.)
DR. GAMBETTI: -- I just point of review. You talk about a point of information. You say that -- you mention GSS, I guess, and the what, Fukuowa (phonetic) --
DR. BROWN: Yes, Fukuoka 1.
DR. GAMBETTI: Fukuowa, and is that from the 102, if I remember correctly, of the --
DR. BROWN: Yes, that is correct.
DR. GAMBETTI: Because that is the only one that also --
DR. BROWN: No, it's not 102. It's 101. It's the standard. It's a classical GSS. Oh, excuse me. You're right. One, oh, two is classical GSS. It's been so long since I've done genetics. You're right.
DR. GAMBETTI: Because that is the only one I know, I think, that I can remember that has both the seven kv fragment that is characteristic of GSS, but also the PrPsc 2730. So in a sense, it can be stretching a little bit compared to the sporadic CJD.
DR. BROWN: Yeah, I think that's right. That's why I want to be sure that I made you aware on the very first slide that that was not accurate, that it truly was GSS.
There's a GSS strain that has been adapted to mice, and it's a hot strain, and therefore, it may not be translatable to sporadic disease, correct. All we can say for sure is that it is a human TSE, and it is not variant. I think that's about it.
DR. GAMBETTI: I agree, but this is also not perhaps the best --
DR. BROWN: No, it is not the best. We understand --
DR. GAMBETTI: -- of GSS either.
DR. BROWN: Yeah. If we had to do it over again, we'd look around for a -- well, I don't know. We'd probably do it the same way because we have two sporadics already on test they haven't transmitted, and so you can take your pick of what you want to pay attention to.
Jay?
DR. EPSTEIN: Yes, Paul. Could you just comment? If I understood you correctly, when you did the pooled apheresis plasma from the six chimps when they were symptomatic at 31 weeks, you also put leukocytes into squirrel monkeys in that case separately IV and IC, but in that instance you have not seen an infection come down in squirrel monkey, and the question is whether it's puzzling that you got transmission from the 27-week asymptomatic sampling, whereas you did not see transmission from the 31-week sampling in symptomatic animals.
DR. BROWN: Yes, I think there are two or three possible explanations, and I don't know if any of them are important. The pre-symptomatic animal was almost symptomatic as it turned out so that we were pretty close to the period at which symptoms would being, and whether you can, you know, make much money on saying one was incubation period and the other was symptomatic in this particular case because both bleedings were so close together. That's one possibility.
The other possibility is we're dealing with a very irregular phenomenon and you're not surprised at all by surprises, so to speak so that a single animal, you could see it almost anywhere.
The third is that we, in fact, did just what I suggested we didn't want to do for the preclinical, namely, by pooling we got under the threshold. See?
You can again take that for what it's worth. It is a possible explanation, and again, until we know what the levels of infectivity are and whether by pooling we get under the threshold of transmission, we simply cannot make pronouncements.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. DeArmond.
DR. DeARMOND: Yeah, it was very interesting data, but the --
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: I just love it. Go ahead.
DR. DeARMOND: Two comments. The first one was that the GSS cases, as I remember from reading your publications -- I think Gibbs was involved with them -- when you transmitted the GSS into animals, into monkeys, perhaps I think it was chimps, the transmission was more typical of CJD rather than GSS. There were no amyloid plaques. It was vacuolar degeneration so that you may be transmitting a peculiar form, as I criticized once in Bali and then you jumped all over me about.
DR. BROWN: I may do it again.
DR. DeARMOND: Calling me a bigot and some other few things like that.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Surely not. I wouldn't have said that.
DR. DeARMOND: So there could be something strange about that particular --
DR. BROWN: Yeah. I think you and Pierluigi are on the same page here. This may be an unusual strain from a number of points of view.
DR. DeARMOND: The other question though has to do with species barrier because the data you're showing is kind of very reassuring to us that it's hard to transmit from blood, but the data from the sheep and from the hamsters and some of the work, I think, that has been done by others, that it's easy in some other animals to transmit, hamster to hamster, mouse to mouse.
Could you comment on the --
DR. BROWN: That's exactly why we went to primates. That's exactly it, because a primate is closer to a human than a mouse is, and that's just common sense.
And so to try and get a little closer to the human situation and not totally depend on rodents for transferrable data, that is why you would use a primate. Otherwise you wouldn't use them. They're too expensive and they cause grief to animal care study people and protocol makers and the whole thing.
Primate studies are a real pain.
DR. DeARMOND: But right now it's inconclusive and you need more time on it.
DR. BROWN: I believe that's true. I think if we cut it off at six years you could still say it was inconclusive, and cutting it off at all will be to some degree inconclusive, and that's just the way it is.
DR. DeARMOND: So what has to be done? Who do you have to convince, or who do we all have to convince to keep that going?
DR. BROWN: Thomas?
Without trying to be flip at all, the people that would be the first people to try to convince would be the funders of the original study. If that fails, and it might for purely practical reasons of finance, then we will have to look elsewhere because I really don't want to see those animals sacrificed, not those eight buddies. Those are crucial animals, and they don't cost a whole lot to maintain. You can maintain eight -- well, they cost a lot from my point of view, but 15 to $20,000 a year would keep them going year after year.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Johnson.
DR. JOHNSON: Yeah, Paul, I'm intrigued as you are by the shortening of the incubation period. Have you in all of the other years of handling these animals when they were transfused, when they were flown out to Louisiana at night -- a lot of the stressful things have happened to some of these chimps. Have you ever noticed that before or is this a new observation?
DR. BROWN: Brand new.
MR. JOHNSON: Brand new. Okay.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Bob, did you want to say something? Dr. Rohwer.
DR. ROHWER: The Frederick fire, wasn't that correlated with a lot of --
DR. BROWN: Not that I k now of, but you may --
DR. ROHWER: Well, that occurred shortly after I came to NIH, and what I remember is that there were a whole bunch of conversions that occurred within the few months following the fire. That was fire that occurred adjacent to the NINDS facility, but in order to protect it, they moved the monkeys out onto the tarmac because they weren't sure it wouldn't burn as well.
DR. BROWN: Well, if you're right, then it's not brand new, but I mean, I'm not sure how we'll ever know because if I call Carlton and ask him, I'm not sure but what I would trust the answer that he gives me, short of records.
You know, Carlot is a very enthusiastic person, and he might say, "Oh, yeah, my God, the whole floor died within three days," but I would want to verify that.
On the other hand, it may be verifiable. There possibly are records that are still extant.
DR. ROHWER: Actually I thought I heard the story from you.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: You didn't because it's brand new for me. I mean, either that or I'm on the way
(Laughter.)
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Bracey.
DR. BRACEY: I was wondering if some of the variability in terms of the intravenous infection route may be related to intraspecies barriers, that is, the genetic differences, the way the cells, the white leukocytes are processed, whether or not microchimerism is established, et cetera.
DR. BROWN: I don't think that processing is at fault, but the question, the point that you raise is a very good one, and needless to say, we have material with which we can analyze genetically all of the animals, and should it turn out that we get, for example, -- I don't know -- a transmission in one variant monkey and no transmissions in another and a transmission in three sporadic monkeys, we will at that point genetically analyze every single animal that has been used in this study, but we wanted to wait until we could see what would be most useful to analyze.
but the material is there, and if need be, we'll do it.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Brown.
I think we'll move on to the open public hearing section of the morning.
snip...
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/04/transcripts/4019t1.DOC
snip...
see full text ;
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2009/09/tseac-meeting-february-12-2004-baxter.html
Thursday, August 12, 2010
USA Blood products, collected from a donor who was at risk for vCJD, were distributed July-August 2010
http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2010/08/usa-blood-products-collected-from-donor.html
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Blood product, collected from a donors possibly at increased risk for vCJD only, was distributed USA JULY 2010
http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2010/08/blood-product-collected-from-donors.html
14th ICID International Scientific Exchange Brochure -
Final Abstract Number: ISE.114
Session: International Scientific Exchange
Transmissible Spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) animal and human TSE in North America update October 2009
T. Singeltary
Bacliff, TX, USA
Background:
An update on atypical BSE and other TSE in North America. Please remember, the typical U.K. c-BSE, the atypical l-BSE (BASE), and h-BSE have all been documented in North America, along with the typical scrapie's, and atypical Nor-98 Scrapie, and to date, 2 different strains of CWD, and also TME. All these TSE in different species have been rendered and fed to food producing animals for humans and animals in North America (TSE in cats and dogs ?), and that the trading of these TSEs via animals and products via the USA and Canada has been immense over the years, decades.
Methods:
12 years independent research of available data
Results:
I propose that the current diagnostic criteria for human TSEs only enhances and helps the spreading of human TSE from the continued belief of the UKBSEnvCJD only theory in 2009. With all the science to date refuting it, to continue to validate this old myth, will only spread this TSE agent through a multitude of potential routes and sources i.e. consumption, medical i.e., surgical, blood, dental, endoscopy, optical, nutritional supplements, cosmetics etc.
Conclusion:
I would like to submit a review of past CJD surveillance in the USA, and the urgent need to make all human TSE in the USA a reportable disease, in every state, of every age group, and to make this mandatory immediately without further delay. The ramifications of not doing so will only allow this agent to spread further in the medical, dental, surgical arena's. Restricting the reporting of CJD and or any human TSE is NOT scientific. Iatrogenic CJD knows NO age group, TSE knows no boundaries. I propose as with Aguzzi, Asante, Collinge, Caughey, Deslys, Dormont, Gibbs, Gajdusek, Ironside, Manuelidis, Marsh, et al and many more, that the world of TSE Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy is far from an exact science, but there is enough proven science to date that this myth should be put to rest once and for all, and that we move forward with a new classification for human and animal TSE that would properly identify the infected species, the source species, and then the route.
page 114 ;
http://ww2.isid.org/Downloads/14th_ICID_ISE_Abstracts.pdf
International Society for Infectious Diseases Web: http://www.isid.org/
please see full text ;
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Emerging Infectious Diseases: CJD, BSE, SCRAPIE, CWD, PRION, TSE Evaluation to Implementation for Transfusion and Transplantation September 2010
http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2010/09/emerging-infectious-diseases-cjd-bse.html
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Detection of prion infection in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: a blood-based assay
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/2011/02/detection-of-prion-infection-in-variant.html
Monday, February 7, 2011
FDA's Currently-Recommended Policies to Reduce the Possible Risk of Transmission of CJD and vCJD by Blood and Blood Products 2011 ???
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2011/02/fdas-currently-recommended-policies-to.html
Monday, September 13, 2010
atypical BSE strains and sporadic CJD strains, is there a connection and why shouldn't there be $
http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2010/09/atypical-bse-strains-and-sporadic-cjd.html
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Atypical L-Type Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (L-BSE) Transmission to Cynomolgus Macaques, a Non-Human Primate
Jpn. J. Infect. Dis., 64 (1), 81-84, 2011
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/2011/01/atypical-l-type-bovine-spongiform.html
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee; Notice of Meeting October 28 and 29, 2010 (COMMENT SUBMISSION)
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2010/09/transmissible-spongiform_14.html
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009 (Singeltary submission)
TO : william.freas@fda.hhs.gov
May 8, 2009
Greetings again Dr. Freas, TSEAC et al,
I would kindly, once again, wish to comment at this meeting about the urgent actions that need to be taken asap, to the Meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009. Due to my disability from my neck injury, I will not be attending this meeting either, however I hope for my submission to be read and submitted. ...
IN reply to ;
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2009/05/meeting-of-transmissible-spongiform.html
Friday, February 11, 2011
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) biannual update (2010/1) Emerging infections/CJD
http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2011/02/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd-biannual.html
TSS
S. M. A. ZAMAN1, F. G. H. HILL2,9, B. PALMER3, C. M. MILLAR4,9, A. BONE1, A. M. MOLESWORTH1, N. CONNOR1, C. A. LEE5, G. DOLAN6, J. T. WILDE7,9, O. N. GILL1, M. MAKRIS8,9
Article first published online: 23 FEB 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2516.2011.02508.x
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Keywords: haemophilia; inherited bleeding disorders; risk assessment; UK plasma products; variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Summary. The risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from potentially infected plasma products remains unquantified. This risk has been assessed for 787 UK patients with an inherited bleeding disorder prospectively followed-up for 10–20 years through the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO) Surveillance Study. These patients had been treated with any of 25 ‘implicated’ clotting factor batches from 1987 to 1999, which included in their manufacture, plasma from eight donors who subsequently developed clinical vCJD. Variant CJD infectivity of these batches was estimated using plasma fraction infectivity estimates and batch-manufacturing data. Total potential vCJD infectivity received by each patient has been estimated by cumulating estimated infectivity from all doses received during their lifetime. Of 787 patients, 604 (77%) were followed-up for over 13 years following exposure to an implicated batch. For these 604 patients, the estimated vCJD risk is =1% for 595, =50% for 164 and 100% for 51. This is additional to background UK population risk due to dietary exposure. Of 604 patients, 94 (16%) received implicated batches linked to donors who developed clinical vCJD within 6 months of their donations. One hundred and fifty-one (25%) had received their first dose when under 10 years of age. By 1st January 2009, none of these patients had developed clinical vCJD. The absence of clinical vCJD cases in this cohort to date suggests that either plasma fraction infectivity estimates are overly precautionary, or the incubation period is longer for this cohort than for implicated cellular blood product recipients. Further follow-up of this cohort is needed.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2516.2011.02508.x/abstract
Atypical BSE (BASE) Transmitted from Asymptomatic Aging Cattle to a Primate
Emmanuel E. Comoy1*, Cristina Casalone2, Nathalie Lescoutra-Etchegaray1, Gianluigi Zanusso3, Sophie Freire1, Dominique Marcé1, Frédéric Auvré1, Marie-Magdeleine Ruchoux1, Sergio Ferrari3, Salvatore Monaco3, Nicole Salès4, Maria Caramelli2, Philippe Leboulch1,5, Paul Brown1, Corinne I. Lasmézas4, Jean-Philippe Deslys1
1 Institute of Emerging Diseases and Innovative Therapies, CEA, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, 2 Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Piemonte, Turin, Italy, 3 Policlinico G.B. Rossi, Verona, Italy, 4 Scripps Florida, Jupiter, Florida, United States of America, 5 Genetics Division, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Abstract
Background Human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) results from foodborne transmission of prions from slaughtered cattle with classical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (cBSE). Atypical forms of BSE, which remain mostly asymptomatic in aging cattle, were recently identified at slaughterhouses throughout Europe and North America, raising a question about human susceptibility to these new prion strains.
Methodology/Principal
Findings Brain homogenates from cattle with classical BSE and atypical (BASE) infections were inoculated intracerebrally into cynomolgus monkeys (Macacca fascicularis), a non-human primate model previously demonstrated to be susceptible to the original strain of cBSE. The resulting diseases were compared in terms of clinical signs, histology and biochemistry of the abnormal prion protein (PrPres). The single monkey infected with BASE had a shorter survival, and a different clinical evolution, histopathology, and prion protein (PrPres) pattern than was observed for either classical BSE or vCJD-inoculated animals. Also, the biochemical signature of PrPres in the BASE-inoculated animal was found to have a higher proteinase K sensitivity of the octa-repeat region. We found the same biochemical signature in three of four human patients with sporadic CJD and an MM type 2 PrP genotype who lived in the same country as the infected bovine.
Conclusion/Significance
Our results point to a possibly higher degree of pathogenicity of BASE than classical BSE in primates and also raise a question about a possible link to one uncommon subset of cases of apparently sporadic CJD. Thus, despite the waning epidemic of classical BSE, the occurrence of atypical strains should temper the urge to relax measures currently in place to protect public health from accidental contamination by BSE-contaminated products.
Citation: Comoy EE, Casalone C, Lescoutra-Etchegaray N, Zanusso G, Freire S, et al. (2008) Atypical BSE (BASE) Transmitted from Asymptomatic Aging Cattle to a Primate. PLoS ONE 3(8): e3017. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003017
Editor: Neil Mabbott, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Received: April 24, 2008; Accepted: August 1, 2008; Published: August 20, 2008
Copyright: © 2008 Comoy et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This work has been supported by the Network of Excellence NeuroPrion.
Competing interests: CEA owns a patent covering the BSE diagnostic tests commercialized by the company Bio-Rad.
* E-mail: emmanuel.comoy@cea.fr
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0003017
Session I - Prions: Structure, Strain and Detection (II)
Searching for BASE Strain Signature in Sporadic Creutzfedlt-Jakob Disease
Gianluigi Zanusso
Department of Neurological and Visual Sciences, Section of Clinical Neurology University of Verona, Verona, Italy.
Bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE) is a newly recognized form of bovine prion disease, which was originally detected in Italy in 2004 as an effect of active surveillance. BASE or BSE L-type (L is referred to the lower electrophoretic PrPSc migration than classical BSE) has now been reported in several countries, including Japan. All field cases of BASE were older than 8 years and neurologically normal at the time of slaughtered. By experimental transmission, we defined the disease phenotype of cattle BASE, which is quite distinct from that seen in typical BSE and characterized by mental dullness and amyotrophy. Surprisingly, following intraspecies and interspecies transmission the incubation period of BASE was shorter than BSE. The relatively easy transmission of BASE isolate as well as the molecular similarity with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) have raised concern regarding its potential passage to humans. Tg humanized mice Met/Met at codon 129 challenged with both BSE and BASE isolates, showed a resistance to BSE but a susceptibility to BASE at a 60% rate; in addition, BASE-inoculated Cynomolgus (129 Met/Met) had shorter incubation periods than BSE-inoculated primates. In this study we compared the biochemical properties of PrPSc in Cynomolgus and in TgHu Met/Met mice challenged with BSE and BASE strains, by conventional SDS-PAGE analysis and 2D separation. The results obtained disclose distinct conformational changes in PrPSc, which are dependent on the inoculated host but not on the codon 129 genotype.
This work was supported by Neuroprion contract n. FOOD CT 2004 -506579 (NOE)
http://www.istitutoveneto.it/prion_09/Abstracts_09.pdf
P02.35
Molecular Features of the Protease-resistant Prion Protein (PrPres) in H-type BSE
Biacabe, A-G1; Jacobs, JG2; Gavier-Widén, D3; Vulin, J1; Langeveld, JPM2; Baron, TGM1 1AFSSA, France; 2CIDC-Lelystad, Netherlands; 3SVA, Sweden
Western blot analyses of PrPres accumulating in the brain of BSE-infected cattle have demonstrated 3 different molecular phenotypes regarding to the apparent molecular masses and glycoform ratios of PrPres bands. We initially described isolates (H-type BSE) essentially characterized by higher PrPres molecular mass and decreased levels of the diglycosylated PrPres band, in contrast to the classical type of BSE. This type is also distinct from another BSE phenotype named L-type BSE, or also BASE (for Bovine Amyloid Spongiform Encephalopathy), mainly characterized by a low representation of the diglycosylated PrPres band as well as a lower PrPres molecular mass. Retrospective molecular studies in France of all available BSE cases older than 8 years old and of part of the other cases identified since the beginning of the exhaustive surveillance of the disease in 20001 allowed to identify 7 H-type BSE cases, among 594 BSE cases that could be classified as classical, L- or H-type BSE. By Western blot analysis of H-type PrPres, we described a remarkable specific feature with antibodies raised against the C-terminal region of PrP that demonstrated the existence of a more C-terminal cleaved form of PrPres (named PrPres#2 ), in addition to the usual PrPres form (PrPres #1). In the unglycosylated form, PrPres #2 migrates at about 14 kDa, compared to 20 kDa for PrPres #1. The proportion of the PrPres#2 in cattle seems to by higher compared to the PrPres#1. Furthermore another PK-resistant fragment at about 7 kDa was detected by some more N-terminal antibodies and presumed to be the result of cleavages of both N- and C-terminal parts of PrP. These singular features were maintained after transmission of the disease to C57Bl/6 mice. The identification of these two additional PrPres fragments (PrPres #2 and 7kDa band) reminds features reported respectively in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and in Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker (GSS) syndrome in humans.
http://www.neuroprion.com/pdf_docs/conferences/prion2007/abstract_book.pdf
P26 TRANSMISSION OF ATYPICAL BOVINE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY (BSE) IN HUMANIZED MOUSE MODELS
Liuting Qing1, Fusong Chen1, Michael Payne1, Wenquan Zou1, Cristina Casalone2, Martin Groschup3, Miroslaw Polak4, Maria Caramelli2, Pierluigi Gambetti1, Juergen Richt5*, and Qingzhong Kong1 1Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA; 2CEA, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale, Italy; 3Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Germany; 4National Veterinary Research Institute, Poland; 5Kansas State University, Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology Department, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA. *Previous address: USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA 50010, USA
Classical BSE is a world-wide prion disease in cattle, and the classical BSE strain (BSE-C) has led to over 200 cases of clinical human infection (variant CJD). Two atypical BSE strains, BSE-L (also named BASE) and BSE-H, have been discovered in three continents since 2004. The first case of naturally occurring BSE with mutated bovine PrP gene (termed BSE-M) was also found in 2006 in the USA. The transmissibility and phenotypes of these atypical BSE strains/isolates in humans were unknown. We have inoculated humanized transgenic mice with classical and atypical BSE strains (BSE-C, BSE-L, BSE-H) and the BSE-M isolate. We have found that the atypical BSE-L strain is much more virulent than the classical BSE-C. The atypical BSE-H strain is also transmissible in the humanized transgenic mice with distinct phenotype, but no transmission has been observed for the BSE-M isolate so far.
III International Symposium on THE NEW PRION BIOLOGY: BASIC SCIENCE, DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY 2 - 4 APRIL 2009, VENEZIA (ITALY)
http://www.istitutoveneto.it/prion_09/Abstracts_09.pdf
PRION 2010
International Prion Congress: From agent to disease September 8–11, 2010 Salzburg, Austria
PPo3-11:
Blood Transmission Experiments in Primates: Squirrel Monkeys (the Baxter Study)
Paul Brown, James Ironside, Susan Gibson, Robert G. Will, Thomas R. Kreil and Christian Abee
Plasma and buffy coat samples from 2 sCJD and 3 vCJD cases were inoculated i.c. and i.v. into a total of 21 squirrel monkeys. Pooled brain from the 3 vCJD patients titered 106 LD50/g (i.c.). Whole blood from each of 4 monkeys inoculated with 10% vCJD brain homogenate was transfused i.v. to individual recipient monkeys at approximately 3-month intervals during the incubation and clinical stages of disease in the donor animals. Plasma, RBC’s, platelets, and purified leukocytes from 6 chimpanzees infected with either human sCJD or GSS were inoculated i.c. and i.v. into 12 monkeys. In the entire group of monkeys inoculated with blood or blood components, only a single neuropathologically-verified transmission occurred within a 5-year observation period, in an animal inoculated with leukocytes from a pair of GSS-infected chimpanzee.
Conclusions. In a primate model highly susceptible to TSE (the squirrel monkey), infectivity was not detected (<10 i.c. LD50/ml) in plasma or buffy coat from 2 sCJD and 3 vCJD patients, or in whole blood from 1st passage vCJD in monkeys. We did, however, detect infectivity in one monkey inoculated with purified leukocytes from chimpanzee-passaged GSS, and observed what appeared to be a ‘triggering’ of symptomatic disease by physiological stress in chimpanzees subjected to plasmapheresis under general anaesthesia.
PPo4-20:
All Clinically Relevant Components, from Prion Infected Blood Donors, can Cause Disease Following a Single Transfusion
Sandra McCutcheon,1 Fiona E. Houston,2 Anthony R. Alejo-Blanco,1 Christopher de Wolf,1 Boon Chin Tan,1 Anthony Smith,3 Nora Hunter,1 Valerie S. Hornsey,4 Ian R. MacGregor,4 Christopher V. Prowse,4 Marc Turner5 and Jean C. Manson1
1The Roslin Institute; Roslin, Edinburgh UK; 2The University of Glasgow; Glasgow, UK; 3The Institute for Animal Health; Compton, Berkshire UK; 4National Science Laboratory; Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS); Edinburgh, UK; 5University of Edinburgh and SNBTS; Edinburgh, UK
Key words: blood, prion, BSE, transfusion
Introduction. To date, there have been over 220 cases of vCJD worldwide, likely acquired directly from bovine sources. There is concern that human to human transmission from individuals sub-clinically infected with vCJD may amplify/prolong a vCJD epidemic. The area of greatest concern in this respect is blood transfusion, of which there have been several reported cases. Here we examined which blood components are likely to pose the greatest risk of transmitting vCJD via blood transfusion using our sheep BSE model.
Results. 67% of donors have been confirmed as having BSE. We have recorded 25 positive transmissions of BSE following transfusion of non-leucodepleted blood components and 2 transmissions resulting from the transfusion of leucoreduced red cells and leucoreduced plasma.
Conclusion. We show that all components, prepared to the same criteria as used in human medicine, contain sufficient levels of infectivity to cause disease in recipients following a single blood transfusion. Leucoreduction of plasma and red cell concentrates does not remove infectivity. These data indicate the importance of devising appropriate control measures to minimise the risk of human to human transmission of vCJD by blood transfusion. Department of Health, UK (007/0162).
Methods. Sheep were orally infected with bovine BSE brain homogenate. We collected two full-sized donations of whole blood, before the onset of clinical signs. The following components were transfused into naive recipients: whole blood, red cell concentrates buffy coat, plasma and platelet units. We also transfused leucoreduced plasma, platelets and red cells. We collected a unit of whole blood from selected primary recipients for transfusion into secondary recipients.
PPo4-21:
The Risk of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) Among UK Patients with Bleeding Disorders, Known to Have Received Clotting Factors Linked to Donors who Subsequently Developed vCJD
Syed M.A. Zaman,1 Nicky Connor,1 Noel Gill,1 Carolyn M. Millar,2,6 Mike Makris,3,6 Benedict Palmer4 and Frank G.H. Hill5,6
1CJD Section, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections; London, UK; 2Department of Haematology; Imperial College; London, UK; 3University of Sheffield; Royal Hallamshire Hospital; Sheffield, UK; 4National Haemophilia Database; Manchester, UK; 5The Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Birmingham, UK; 6Members of the Transfusion Transmitted Infection Working Party of the UK; Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO); Sheffield, South Yorkshire UK
The risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) from potentially infected plasma products remains un-quantified. This risk has been assessed for 787 UK bleeding disorder patients prospectively followed-up for 10–20 years through the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO) Surveillance Study. These patients were treated with any of 25 ‘implicated’ clotting factor batches from 1987–1999, which included in their manufacture plasma from eight donors who subsequently developed vCJD. VCJD infectivity of these batches was estimated using plasma fraction infectivity estimates and batch manufacturing data. The quantity of implicated batches received by these patients was obtained. Total vCJD infectivity received by each patient has been estimated by cumulating infectivity from all doses received in their lifetime. Of 787 patients, 604 (77%) were followed-up for over 13 years since exposure to an implicated batch. By end 2008, none of these patients had developed vCJD. For these 604 patients, the estimated vCJD risk is <1% for 595, <50% for 164, and 100% for 51. This is additional to the background UK population risk due to dietary exposure. Of 604 patients, 94 (16%) received implicated batches linked to donors who developed vCJD within six months of their donations. 151 (25%) had received their first dose under 10 years of age. The absence of clinical vCJD cases in this cohort to date suggests that either plasma fraction infectivity estimates are overly precautionary, or the incubation period is longer for this cohort than for implicated cellular blood product recipients. Further follow up of this cohort is needed to answer these questions.
http://www.prion2010.org/bilder/prion_2010_program_latest_w_posters_4_.pdf?139&PHPSESSID=a30a38202cfec579000b77af81be3099
FC5.1.1
Transmission Results in Squirrel Monkeys Inoculated with Human sCJD, vCJD, and GSS Blood Specimens: the Baxter Study
Brown, P1; Gibson, S2; Williams, L3; Ironside, J4; Will, R4; Kreil, T5; Abee, C3 1Fondation Alliance BioSecure, France; 2University of South Alabama, USA; 3University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA; 4Western General Hospital, UK; 5Baxter BioSience, Austria
Background: Rodent and sheep models of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) have documented blood infectivity in both the pre-clinical and clinical phases of disease. Results in a (presumably more appropriate) non-human primate model have not been reported.
Objective: To determine if blood components (red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma) from various forms of human TSE are infectious.
Methods: Blood components were inoculated intra-cerebrally (0.1 ml) and intravenously (0.5 ml) into squirrel monkeys from 2 patients with sporadic Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease (sCJD) and 3 patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Additional monkeys were inoculated with buffy coat or plasma samples from chimpanzees infected with either sCJD or Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease (GSS). Animals were monitored for a period of 5 years, and all dying or sacrificed animals had post-mortem neuropathological examinations and Western blots to determine the presence or absence of the misfolded prion protein (PrPTSE).
Results: No transmissions occurred in any of the animals inoculated with blood components from patients with sporadic or variant CJD. All donor chimpanzees (sCJD and GSS) became symptomatic within 6 weeks of their pre-clinical phase plasmapheresis, several months earlier than the expected onset of illness. One monkey inoculated with purified leukocytes from a pre-clinical GSS chimpanzee developed disease after 36 months.
Conclusion: No infectivity was found in small volumes of blood components from 4 patients with sporadic CJD and 3 patients with variant CJD. ***However, a single transmission from a chimpanzee-passaged strain of GSS shows that infectivity may be present in leukocytes, and the shock of general anaesthesia and plasmspheresis appears to have triggered the onset of illness in pre-clinical donor chimpanzees.
FC5.1.2
Interim Transmission Results in Cynomolgus Macaques Inoculated with BSE and vCJD Blood Specimens
Lasmezas, C1; Lescoutra, N2; Comoy, E2; Holznagel, E3; Loewer, J3; Motzkus, D4; Hunsmann, G4; Ingrosso, L5; Bierke, P6; Pocchiari, M5; Ironside, J7; Will, R7; Deslys, JP2 1Scripps Florida, Infectology, USA; 2CEA, France; 3PEI, Germany; 4DPZ, Germany; 5Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Italy; 6SMI, Sweden; 7CJD Surveillance Unit, UK
BSE and vCJD transmitted to cynomolgus macaques reproduce many features of human vCJD, including clinical symptoms, neuropathological hallmarks of vCJD, PrPres electrophoretical pattern and, most importantly, the wide distribution of infectivity in peripheral organs. The latter characteristic distinguishes vCJD from sCJD in both humans and cynomolgus macaques, and prompted us to use this non-human primate model for further investigations of vCJD and its risk for human health. The occurrence of four vCJD infections in humans transfused with blood from patients who later developed vCJD has raised concern about blood transfusion safety in countries with vCJD. In this collaborative European study, we investigated the infectivity of blood components and whole blood administered by intracerebral (ic) and intravenous (iv) routes. Buffy-coat and whole blood was inoculated by ic and iv route, respectively, from two vCJD patients and from two clinical vCJD-inoculated macaques. Transfusions were also performed from whole blood and blood leucodepleted according to hospital practice standards from two clinical BSE inoculated macaques. Blood infectivity during the preclinical phase is being examined in orally infected macaques. Whole blood was collected and transfused from one such animal two years after oral challenge, whereas buffy-coat and plasma from two animals at 2 and 4.5 years post-challenge, respectively, have been inoculated by the ic route. This is an ongoing study in which recipient animals continue to be observed at various times post-inoculation. So far, we have had one positive transmission in one animal transfused 65 months earlier with 40 ml of whole blood from a vCJD macaque (the characteristics of the disease in this animal will be shown in a separate poster by E. Comoy). This positive transmission reproduces transfusion transmission of vCJD in humans, with an incubation of 5.5 years compatible with incubation periods observed in humans.
http://www.prion2007.com/pdf/Prion%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf
Saturday, September 5, 2009
TSEAC MEETING FEBRUARY 12, 2004 THE BAXTER STUDY GSS
snip...
But the first thing is our own study, and as I mentioned, it's a Baxter primate study, and those are the major participants. And the goal was twofold, and here is the first one: to see whether CJD, either sporadic or familial -- actually it turns out to be the familial CJD is incorrect. It really should be the Fukuoka strain of Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease. So it's really GSS instead of familial CJD -- when passaged through chimps into squirrel monkeys using purified blood components, very pure blood components.
So this addresses the question that was raised just recently about whether or not red cell infectivity that's been found in rodents is really in the red cells or is it contaminated.
We prepared these samples with exquisite care, and they are ultra-ultra-ultra purified. There's virtually no contamination of any of the components that we looked at ? platelets, red cells, plasma, white cells -- with any other component.
These are a sort of new set of slides, and what I've tried to do is make them less complicated and more clear, but I'm afraid I haven't included the build. So you'll just have to try and follow what I explain with this little red pointer.
There were three initial patients. Two of them had sporadic CJD. One of them had Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome. Brain tissue from each individual patient was inoculated intracerebrally into a pair of chimpanzees. All right?
From those chimps, either plasma or ultra purified -- in fact, everything is ultra-purified. I'll just talk about purified plasma, purified white cells -- were inoculated intracerebrally and intravenously to get the maximum amount of infective load into a pair of squirrel monkeys.
The same thing was done for each of these three sets. This monkey died from non-CJD causes at 34 months post inoculation.
Let me go back for a second. I didn't point out the fact that these were not sacrificed at this point. These chimpanzees were apheresed at 27 weeks when they were still asymptomatic. In this instance, we apheresed them terminally when they were symptomatic.
And before I forget, I want to mention just a little sidelight of this. Chimpanzees in our experience -- and I think we may be the only people that have ever inoculated chimpanzees, and that's no longer a possibility, so this was 20, 30 years ago -- the shortest incubation period of any chimpanzee that we have ever seen with direct intracerebral inoculation is 13 months.
So we chose 27 weeks, which is about seven months, and incidentally typically the incubation period is more like 16 or 18 months. The shortest was 13 months. We chose the 27th week, which is about six and a half months, thinking that this would be about halfway through the incubation period, which we wanted to check for the presence or absence of infectivity.
But within four weeks after the apheresis, which was conducted under general anesthesia for three or four hours apiece, every single one of the six chimpanzees became symptomatic. That is another experiment that I would love to conclude, perhaps because this is simply not heard of, and it very much smells like we triggered clinical illness. We didn't trigger the disease, but it certainly looks like we triggered symptomatic disease at a point that was much earlier than one would have possibly expected.
Maybe it will never be done because it would probably open the floodgates of litigation. There's no end of little things that you can find out from CJD patients after the fact. For example, the neighbor's dog comes over, barks at a patient, makes him fall down, and three weeks later he gets CJD. So you have a lawsuit against the neighbor.
I mean, this is not an unheard of matter, but I do think that physical stress in the form of anesthesia and four hours of whatever goes on with anesthesia, low blood pressure, sometimes a little hypoxemia looks like it's a bad thing.
So here we have the 31st week. All of the chimps are symptomatic, and here what we did was in order to make the most use of the fewest monkeys, which is always a problem in primate research, we took these same three patients and these six chimps. Only now we pooled these components; that is to say, we pooled the plasma from all six chimps. We pooled ultra-purified white cells from all six chimps because here we wanted to see whether or not we could distinguish a difference between intracerebral route of infection and intravenous route of infection.
With respect to platelets and red blood cells, we did not follow that. We inoculated both intracerebral and intravenously, as we had done earlier because nobody has any information on whether or not platelets and red cells are infectious, and so we wanted again to get the maximum.
This is an IV versus IC goal. This one, again, is just getting the maximum load in to see whether there is, in fact, any infectivity in pure platelets, in pure red cells.
And of all of the above, the only transmission of disease related to the inoculation was in a squirrel monkey that received pure leukocytes from the presymptomatic apheresis. So that goes some way to address the question as to whether or not it's a matter of contamination. To date the red cells have not been -- the monkeys that receive red cells have not been observed for more than a year because that was a later experiment.
So we still can't say about red cells, but we're about four and a half years down the road now, and we have a single transmission from purified leukocytes, nothing from plasma and nothing from platelets.
That was the first part of the experiment. The second part was undertaken with the cooperation of Bob Will and others supplying material to us. These were a couple of human, sporadic cases of CJD and three variant cases of CJD from which we obtained buffy coat and plasma separated in a normal way. That is, these are not purified components.
The two cases of sporadic CJD, the plasma was pooled from both patients. The buffy coat was pooled from both patients, and then inoculated intracerebrally and intravenously into three squirrel monkeys each. This is a non-CJD death five years after inoculation. The other animals are still alive.
For variant CJD we decided not to pool. It was more important to eliminate the possibility that there was just a little bit of infectivity in one patient that would have been diluted to extinction, if you like, by mixing them if it were to so occur with two patients, for example, who did not have infectivity. So each one of these was done individually, but the principle was the same: plasma and buffy coat for each patient was inoculated into either two or three squirrel monkeys. This is, again, a non-CJD related death.
In addition to that, we inoculated rain as a positive control from the two sporadic disease cases of human -- from the two human sporadic cases at ten to the minus one and ten to the minus three dilutions. We have done this many, many times in the past with other sporadic patients. So we knew what to expect, and we got exactly what we did expect, namely, after an incubation period not quite two years, all four monkeys developed disease at this dilution and at the minus three dilution, not a whole lot of difference between the two.
Now, these are the crucial monkeys because each one of these monkeys every three to four months was bled and the blood transfused into a new healthy monkey, but the same monkey all the time. So this monkey, for example, would have received in the course of 21 months about six different transfusions of blood from this monkey into this monkey, similarly with this pair, this pair, and this pair. So you can call these buddies. This is sort of the term that was used. These monkeys are still alive.
In the same way, the three human variant CJD specimens, brain, were inoculated into four monkeys, and again, each one of these monkeys has been repeatedly bled at three to four month intervals and that blood transfused into a squirrel monkey, the same one each time. Ideally we would love to have taken bleeding at three months and inoculated a monkey and then let him go, watch him, and then done the same thing at six months. It would have increased the number of monkeys eightfold and just unacceptably expensive. So we did the best we could.
That, again, is a non-CJD death, as is this.
This was of interest mainly to show that the titer of infectivity in brain from variant CJD is just about the same as it from sporadic. We didn't do a minus five and a minus seven in sporadic because we have an enormous experience already with sporadic disease in squirrel monkeys, and we know that this is exactly what happens. It disappears at about ten to the minus five. So the brain titer in monkeys receiving human vCJD is identical to the brain titer in monkeys that have been inoculated with sporadic CJD.
That's the experiment. All of the monkeys in aqua are still alive. They are approaching a five-year observation period, and I think the termination of this experiment will now need to be discussed very seriously in view of a probable six-year incubation period in the U.K. case. The original plan was to terminate the experiment after five years of observation with the understanding that ideally you would keep these animals for their entire life span, which is what we used to do when had unlimited space, money, and facilities. We can't do that anymore.
It's not cheap, but I think in view of the U.K. case, it will be very important to think very seriously about allowing at least these buddies and the buddies from the sporadic CJD to go on for several more years because although you might think that the U.K. case has made experimental work redundant, in point of fact, anything that bears on the risk of this disease in humans is worthwhile knowing, and one of the things we don't know is frequency of infection. We don't know whether this case in the U.K. is going to be unique and never happen again or whether all 13 or 14 patients have received blood components are ultimately going to die. Let's hope not.
The French primate study is primarily directed now by Corinne Lasmezas. As you know, the late Dominique Dromont was the original, originally initiated this work, and they have very active primate laboratory in France, and I'm only going to show two very simple slides to summarize what they did.
The first one is simply to show you the basis of their statement that the IV route of infection looks to be pretty efficient because we all know that the intracerebral route of infection is the most efficient, and if you look at this where they inoculated the same infective load either intracerebrally or intravenously, the incubation periods were not substantially different, which suggests but doesn't prove, but doesn't prove that the route of infection is pretty efficient.
Lower doses of brain material given IV did extend the incubation period and presumably it's because of the usual dose response phenomenon that you see in any infectious disease.
With a whopping dose of brain orally, the incubation period was even lower. Again, just one more example of inefficiency of the route of infection and the necessity to use more infective material to get transmissions.
And they also have blood inoculated IV which is on test, and the final slide or at least the penultimate slide shows you what they have on test and the time of observation, that taken human vCJD and like us inoculated buffy coat, they've also inoculated whole blood which we did not do.
So to a great extent their studies are complementary to ours and makes it all worthwhile.
We have about -- oh, I don't know -- a one to two-year lead time on the French, but they're still getting into pretty good observation periods. Here's three-plus years.
They have variant CJD adapted to the macaque. That is to say this one was passaged in macaque monkeys, the cynomolgus, and they did the same thing. Again, we're talking about a study here in which like ours there are no transmissions. I mean, we have that one transmission from leukocytes, and that's it.
Here is a BSE adapted to the macaque. Whole blood, and then they chose to inoculate leukodepleted whole blood, in both instances IV. Here they are out to five years without a transmission.
And then finally oral dosing of the macaque, which had been infected with -- which was infected with BSE, but a macaque passaged BSE, whole blood buffy coat and plasma, all by the IC route, and they're out to three years.
So with the single exception of the leukocyte transmission from our chimp that was inoculated with a sporadic case of CJD or -- excuse me -- with a GSS, Gerstmann-Straussler, in neither our study nor the French study, which are not yet completed have we yet seen a transmission.
And I will just close with a little cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post that I modified slightly lest you get too wound up with these questions of the risk from blood. This should be a "corrective."
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Thanks.
Questions?
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Yes. Any questions for Dr. Brown? Dr. Linden.
DR. LINDEN: I just want to make sure I understand your study design correctly. When you mention the monkeys that have the IV and IC inoculations, the individual monkeys had both or --
DR. BROWN: Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly right.
DR. LINDEN: So an individual monkey had both of those as opposed to some monkeys had one and some had the other?
DR. BROWN: Correct, correct. Where IC and IV are put down together was IC plus IV into a given monkey.
DR. LINDEN: Into a given monkey. Okay.
And the IC inoculations, where were those given?
DR. BROWN: Right parietal cortex, Southern Alabama.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Oh, it can't be that clear. Yeah, here, Pierluigi.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Epstein.
DR. BROWN: Pierluigi always damns me with feint praise. He always says that's a very interesting study, but. I'm waiting for that, Pierluigi.
I think Jay Epstein --
DR. GAMBETTI: I will say that there's an interesting study and will say, but I just --
(Laughter.)
DR. GAMBETTI: -- I just point of review. You talk about a point of information. You say that -- you mention GSS, I guess, and the what, Fukuowa (phonetic) --
DR. BROWN: Yes, Fukuoka 1.
DR. GAMBETTI: Fukuowa, and is that from the 102, if I remember correctly, of the --
DR. BROWN: Yes, that is correct.
DR. GAMBETTI: Because that is the only one that also --
DR. BROWN: No, it's not 102. It's 101. It's the standard. It's a classical GSS. Oh, excuse me. You're right. One, oh, two is classical GSS. It's been so long since I've done genetics. You're right.
DR. GAMBETTI: Because that is the only one I know, I think, that I can remember that has both the seven kv fragment that is characteristic of GSS, but also the PrPsc 2730. So in a sense, it can be stretching a little bit compared to the sporadic CJD.
DR. BROWN: Yeah, I think that's right. That's why I want to be sure that I made you aware on the very first slide that that was not accurate, that it truly was GSS.
There's a GSS strain that has been adapted to mice, and it's a hot strain, and therefore, it may not be translatable to sporadic disease, correct. All we can say for sure is that it is a human TSE, and it is not variant. I think that's about it.
DR. GAMBETTI: I agree, but this is also not perhaps the best --
DR. BROWN: No, it is not the best. We understand --
DR. GAMBETTI: -- of GSS either.
DR. BROWN: Yeah. If we had to do it over again, we'd look around for a -- well, I don't know. We'd probably do it the same way because we have two sporadics already on test they haven't transmitted, and so you can take your pick of what you want to pay attention to.
Jay?
DR. EPSTEIN: Yes, Paul. Could you just comment? If I understood you correctly, when you did the pooled apheresis plasma from the six chimps when they were symptomatic at 31 weeks, you also put leukocytes into squirrel monkeys in that case separately IV and IC, but in that instance you have not seen an infection come down in squirrel monkey, and the question is whether it's puzzling that you got transmission from the 27-week asymptomatic sampling, whereas you did not see transmission from the 31-week sampling in symptomatic animals.
DR. BROWN: Yes, I think there are two or three possible explanations, and I don't know if any of them are important. The pre-symptomatic animal was almost symptomatic as it turned out so that we were pretty close to the period at which symptoms would being, and whether you can, you know, make much money on saying one was incubation period and the other was symptomatic in this particular case because both bleedings were so close together. That's one possibility.
The other possibility is we're dealing with a very irregular phenomenon and you're not surprised at all by surprises, so to speak so that a single animal, you could see it almost anywhere.
The third is that we, in fact, did just what I suggested we didn't want to do for the preclinical, namely, by pooling we got under the threshold. See?
You can again take that for what it's worth. It is a possible explanation, and again, until we know what the levels of infectivity are and whether by pooling we get under the threshold of transmission, we simply cannot make pronouncements.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. DeArmond.
DR. DeARMOND: Yeah, it was very interesting data, but the --
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: I just love it. Go ahead.
DR. DeARMOND: Two comments. The first one was that the GSS cases, as I remember from reading your publications -- I think Gibbs was involved with them -- when you transmitted the GSS into animals, into monkeys, perhaps I think it was chimps, the transmission was more typical of CJD rather than GSS. There were no amyloid plaques. It was vacuolar degeneration so that you may be transmitting a peculiar form, as I criticized once in Bali and then you jumped all over me about.
DR. BROWN: I may do it again.
DR. DeARMOND: Calling me a bigot and some other few things like that.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: Surely not. I wouldn't have said that.
DR. DeARMOND: So there could be something strange about that particular --
DR. BROWN: Yeah. I think you and Pierluigi are on the same page here. This may be an unusual strain from a number of points of view.
DR. DeARMOND: The other question though has to do with species barrier because the data you're showing is kind of very reassuring to us that it's hard to transmit from blood, but the data from the sheep and from the hamsters and some of the work, I think, that has been done by others, that it's easy in some other animals to transmit, hamster to hamster, mouse to mouse.
Could you comment on the --
DR. BROWN: That's exactly why we went to primates. That's exactly it, because a primate is closer to a human than a mouse is, and that's just common sense.
And so to try and get a little closer to the human situation and not totally depend on rodents for transferrable data, that is why you would use a primate. Otherwise you wouldn't use them. They're too expensive and they cause grief to animal care study people and protocol makers and the whole thing.
Primate studies are a real pain.
DR. DeARMOND: But right now it's inconclusive and you need more time on it.
DR. BROWN: I believe that's true. I think if we cut it off at six years you could still say it was inconclusive, and cutting it off at all will be to some degree inconclusive, and that's just the way it is.
DR. DeARMOND: So what has to be done? Who do you have to convince, or who do we all have to convince to keep that going?
DR. BROWN: Thomas?
Without trying to be flip at all, the people that would be the first people to try to convince would be the funders of the original study. If that fails, and it might for purely practical reasons of finance, then we will have to look elsewhere because I really don't want to see those animals sacrificed, not those eight buddies. Those are crucial animals, and they don't cost a whole lot to maintain. You can maintain eight -- well, they cost a lot from my point of view, but 15 to $20,000 a year would keep them going year after year.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Johnson.
DR. JOHNSON: Yeah, Paul, I'm intrigued as you are by the shortening of the incubation period. Have you in all of the other years of handling these animals when they were transfused, when they were flown out to Louisiana at night -- a lot of the stressful things have happened to some of these chimps. Have you ever noticed that before or is this a new observation?
DR. BROWN: Brand new.
MR. JOHNSON: Brand new. Okay.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Bob, did you want to say something? Dr. Rohwer.
DR. ROHWER: The Frederick fire, wasn't that correlated with a lot of --
DR. BROWN: Not that I k now of, but you may --
DR. ROHWER: Well, that occurred shortly after I came to NIH, and what I remember is that there were a whole bunch of conversions that occurred within the few months following the fire. That was fire that occurred adjacent to the NINDS facility, but in order to protect it, they moved the monkeys out onto the tarmac because they weren't sure it wouldn't burn as well.
DR. BROWN: Well, if you're right, then it's not brand new, but I mean, I'm not sure how we'll ever know because if I call Carlton and ask him, I'm not sure but what I would trust the answer that he gives me, short of records.
You know, Carlot is a very enthusiastic person, and he might say, "Oh, yeah, my God, the whole floor died within three days," but I would want to verify that.
On the other hand, it may be verifiable. There possibly are records that are still extant.
DR. ROHWER: Actually I thought I heard the story from you.
(Laughter.)
DR. BROWN: You didn't because it's brand new for me. I mean, either that or I'm on the way
(Laughter.)
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Dr. Bracey.
DR. BRACEY: I was wondering if some of the variability in terms of the intravenous infection route may be related to intraspecies barriers, that is, the genetic differences, the way the cells, the white leukocytes are processed, whether or not microchimerism is established, et cetera.
DR. BROWN: I don't think that processing is at fault, but the question, the point that you raise is a very good one, and needless to say, we have material with which we can analyze genetically all of the animals, and should it turn out that we get, for example, -- I don't know -- a transmission in one variant monkey and no transmissions in another and a transmission in three sporadic monkeys, we will at that point genetically analyze every single animal that has been used in this study, but we wanted to wait until we could see what would be most useful to analyze.
but the material is there, and if need be, we'll do it.
CHAIRPERSON PRIOLA: Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Brown.
I think we'll move on to the open public hearing section of the morning.
snip...
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/04/transcripts/4019t1.DOC
snip...
see full text ;
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2009/09/tseac-meeting-february-12-2004-baxter.html
Thursday, August 12, 2010
USA Blood products, collected from a donor who was at risk for vCJD, were distributed July-August 2010
http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2010/08/usa-blood-products-collected-from-donor.html
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Blood product, collected from a donors possibly at increased risk for vCJD only, was distributed USA JULY 2010
http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2010/08/blood-product-collected-from-donors.html
14th ICID International Scientific Exchange Brochure -
Final Abstract Number: ISE.114
Session: International Scientific Exchange
Transmissible Spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) animal and human TSE in North America update October 2009
T. Singeltary
Bacliff, TX, USA
Background:
An update on atypical BSE and other TSE in North America. Please remember, the typical U.K. c-BSE, the atypical l-BSE (BASE), and h-BSE have all been documented in North America, along with the typical scrapie's, and atypical Nor-98 Scrapie, and to date, 2 different strains of CWD, and also TME. All these TSE in different species have been rendered and fed to food producing animals for humans and animals in North America (TSE in cats and dogs ?), and that the trading of these TSEs via animals and products via the USA and Canada has been immense over the years, decades.
Methods:
12 years independent research of available data
Results:
I propose that the current diagnostic criteria for human TSEs only enhances and helps the spreading of human TSE from the continued belief of the UKBSEnvCJD only theory in 2009. With all the science to date refuting it, to continue to validate this old myth, will only spread this TSE agent through a multitude of potential routes and sources i.e. consumption, medical i.e., surgical, blood, dental, endoscopy, optical, nutritional supplements, cosmetics etc.
Conclusion:
I would like to submit a review of past CJD surveillance in the USA, and the urgent need to make all human TSE in the USA a reportable disease, in every state, of every age group, and to make this mandatory immediately without further delay. The ramifications of not doing so will only allow this agent to spread further in the medical, dental, surgical arena's. Restricting the reporting of CJD and or any human TSE is NOT scientific. Iatrogenic CJD knows NO age group, TSE knows no boundaries. I propose as with Aguzzi, Asante, Collinge, Caughey, Deslys, Dormont, Gibbs, Gajdusek, Ironside, Manuelidis, Marsh, et al and many more, that the world of TSE Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy is far from an exact science, but there is enough proven science to date that this myth should be put to rest once and for all, and that we move forward with a new classification for human and animal TSE that would properly identify the infected species, the source species, and then the route.
page 114 ;
http://ww2.isid.org/Downloads/14th_ICID_ISE_Abstracts.pdf
International Society for Infectious Diseases Web: http://www.isid.org/
please see full text ;
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Emerging Infectious Diseases: CJD, BSE, SCRAPIE, CWD, PRION, TSE Evaluation to Implementation for Transfusion and Transplantation September 2010
http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2010/09/emerging-infectious-diseases-cjd-bse.html
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Detection of prion infection in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: a blood-based assay
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/2011/02/detection-of-prion-infection-in-variant.html
Monday, February 7, 2011
FDA's Currently-Recommended Policies to Reduce the Possible Risk of Transmission of CJD and vCJD by Blood and Blood Products 2011 ???
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2011/02/fdas-currently-recommended-policies-to.html
Monday, September 13, 2010
atypical BSE strains and sporadic CJD strains, is there a connection and why shouldn't there be $
http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2010/09/atypical-bse-strains-and-sporadic-cjd.html
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Atypical L-Type Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (L-BSE) Transmission to Cynomolgus Macaques, a Non-Human Primate
Jpn. J. Infect. Dis., 64 (1), 81-84, 2011
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/2011/01/atypical-l-type-bovine-spongiform.html
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee; Notice of Meeting October 28 and 29, 2010 (COMMENT SUBMISSION)
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2010/09/transmissible-spongiform_14.html
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009 (Singeltary submission)
TO : william.freas@fda.hhs.gov
May 8, 2009
Greetings again Dr. Freas, TSEAC et al,
I would kindly, once again, wish to comment at this meeting about the urgent actions that need to be taken asap, to the Meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009. Due to my disability from my neck injury, I will not be attending this meeting either, however I hope for my submission to be read and submitted. ...
IN reply to ;
http://tseac.blogspot.com/2009/05/meeting-of-transmissible-spongiform.html
Friday, February 11, 2011
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) biannual update (2010/1) Emerging infections/CJD
http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2011/02/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd-biannual.html
TSS
posted by Terry S. Singeltary Sr. | 1:54 PM
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