THE SUNDAY TIMES, London / April 9 2000 / Jonathan Leake Science Editor
SCIENTISTS have moved one step closer to confirming that thousands of Britons could be infected with variant CJD, the human form of "mad cow" disease (BSE).
A government-funded study of appendix and tonsil tissues taken from 2,000 people since the 1980s is understood to have found a small number of samples which tested positive for the infective prion particles that cause the disease. If confirmed, the results suggest the number of people who might get the disease could reach thousands.
The researchers are, however, thought to be worried about the accuracy of the tests and are to carry out checks be-fore announcing them to a government committee next month.
Details of the work were discussed last week when researchers into CJD, BSE and other prion diseases held a private meeting at Keele University.
The event, organised by the agriculture and health ministries and by the government's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, was conducted amid unprecedented security. It was not announced to the press and every scientist attending had to pledge not to reveal anything.
The study was ordered to try to find out how many people were at risk of contracting variant CJD. Half of it is being carried out by Professor James Ironside at the CJD national surveillance unit in Edinburgh, and the other half is being done at Derriford hospital in Plymouth by Dr David Hilton.
Both men attended last week's meeting and are understood to have held discussions with other scientists on the nature of their results.
The research followed the death of Tony Barrett, a Devon coastguard, who died of variant CJD in 1998. His appendix had been removed in 1995. When it was re-examined after his death scientists found abnormal prion protein - showing that his illness could have been diagnosed before he became ill.
Since then the two research centres have been collecting tonsil and appendix samples removed between the mid-1980s and late 1990s - the period when exposure to BSE-contaminated meat was at its peak.
If the tests do find any positive cases of variant CJD then the implications would be serious. Extrapolating the result to the population as a whole suggests that for each positive result picked up by the study, 30,000 people in the population would get the disease.
So far there have been more than 50 deaths from variant CJD with at least a dozen more people currently dying from the disease. Among them is a woman who gave birth just before she was diagnosed and whose child is now suspected of being the first case in which the disease has passed from mother to child.
(posted without permission)
