Posted on 08/23/2004 8:17:57 AM PDT by null and void
EAST HILLS, N.Y.—For the second time this summer, a major advance has been unveiled in the battle against infectious prions associated with Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). The latest, announced last month by Pall Corp. (www.pall.com), is a proprietary filter technology that's said to reduce deadly prions from the blood supply before it is used for transfusions.
Earlier this summer, Serologicals Corp. (Atlanta, Ga.; www.serologicals) was granted a patent on its proprietary purification process that clears the Mad Cow prions from bovine-based pharmaceuticals. More than 60 percent of pharmaceuticals on the market have involved bovine-based products in their development or manufacture.
Pall Corp.'s Leukotrap affinity prion reduction filter is designed to offer a multi-targeted approach to blood safety by reducing leukocytes and infectious prions that are cell or non-cell associated. Tests indicate the filter reduces deadly Mad Cow Disease prions from the blood supply before it is used for transfusions.
Prion transmission via blood transfusion, though reduced in recent years, remains a concern for the public blood supply—particularly overseas. In December 2003, a case of vCJD was identified in a person who received a blood transfusion six years earlier from a donor who later died of the disease.
(Excerpt) Read more at cr.pennnet.com ...
Prions = baaaaaaaaad mojo.
> Tests indicate the filter reduces deadly Mad Cow
> Disease prions from the blood supply ...
Note "reduces", and not "eliminates".
This sounds effective and definitely worth doing on a
routine basis, but it apparently can't guarantee that
the resulting blood will be 100% prion-free.
There seems to be some chance, however, that prion
infections are a threshold phenomenon, and that just
getting the count down to below threshold is as good
as "elimination".
Time will tell, and progress is indeed being made.
It would be nice to have an inexpensive test for them as well.....
When you run blood in you machine, mon...
Interesting that they supposedly can reduce them since there is no known way to kill them. Boiling at thousands of degress or putting any known anti-viral or anti-bacterial does not in the least affect the viability of a prion.
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