Could two more waves of vCJD be coming?

This article in The Guardian talks about how there could be two more possible waves of vCJD to come in the future. It’s a good article, pretty long, but worth reading because it’s filled with stats and facts.

I’ve been wondering about titer lately, as in how much of the infectious agent can make you sick. If I eat one infected steak, is that enough? Or must I eat infected steak a few times a week every week for years in order to get infected with BSE and thus come down with vCJD? Nobody really knows that answer to that as far as I can tell.

(My example is purely hypothetical, as I don’t eat steak and my family carries the E200K mutation. It doesn’t matter what I eat at this point, it just matters whether I carry the marker – again, as far as we know to date. I wish there were research done specifically on this).

If I get one pint of blood in a transfusion that is infected with vCJD, is that enough to infect me? Apparently, yes, according to this article. And that is just the point of this article. Who cares about steak and cattle anymore when an indeterminable amount of human beings are carrying the infectious agent and unknowingly giving blood?

It is a huge problem.

That brings me to my next point. There are two possible answers to the problem of the second wave:

1. Come up with a blood test for vCJD.
2. Cure CJD!

The blood test for vCJD would be a great advancement for blood donation. But I feel the only real answer is to just cure the damn disease. End of story. A cure for CJD would end all these issues. It would also save my life (if I carry the marker) and the lives of others like my relatives who carry the E200K mutation or any other mutation. This disease isn’t just about cattle; some of us don’t need beef to get sick. We’re the ones who will need the cure someday regardless of whatever political policy changes do or don’t get made.

Read the article here. One more item of food for thought, taken from the article:

"The fear of some researchers now is that, 20 years on, interest in answering the crucial remaining questions will wane. But leaving them unanswered would be a desperate mistake, says Professor Bird. "If that happens, we won't have all the information, and that's extremely dangerous.""