Prions and the blood and immune systems

Institute of Animal Health, Edinburgh.

Prion diseases take a number of forms in animals and humans. They are caused by conformational change in widely expressed prion protein leading to the formation of intracellular aggregates. Although the main focus of disease is the central nervous system, it is known that involvement of the immune system occurs in peripherally transmitted disease in particular. Animal experiments suggest that in some prion diseases follicular dendritic cells in the germinal centers are a major site of initial accumulation, and that abnormal prion protein and infectivity are detectable in peripheral lymphoid tissue from the earliest phase of disease. This raises the possibility that in a human peripherally transmitted prion disease like variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, further transmission could occur through blood or tissue products or contamination of surgical instrumentation. Indeed two recent reports confirm that this disease has been transmitted by blood, raising significant public health concerns.