Alzheimer’s can spread between people through rare medical accidents, a study suggests. Researchers have found that some patients who received human growth hormone from deceased donors developed signs of Alzheimer’s, likely due to contamination with proteins that triggered the disease in their brains.
A small number of patients who received human growth hormone from deceased donors in a prohibited practice developed symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The chronic neurodegenerative disease can spread from person to person through rare medical accidents, research suggests.
Experts point out that there is no evidence that the disease can be transmitted between people through everyday activities or routine care.
Alzheimer’s can be passed from one person to another
Researchers say a small number of people who received human growth hormone from the pituitary glands of deceased donors ended up developing early-onset Alzheimer’s, probably because the hormones used were contaminated with proteins that seeded the disease in their brains.
“We are not at any point suggesting that you can get Alzheimer’s. This disease is not communicable in the sense of a viral or bacterial infection,” said Prof John Collinge, co-author of the study and director of the MRC Prion Unit.
It is only when people have been accidentally inoculated with human tissue or extracts of human tissue that contain “germs”.
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Alzheimer’s is like a prion disease
The team says the new study adds weight to the idea that Alzheimer’s has similarities to prion diseases, including in the mechanism by which the proteins involved spread in the brain.
Prion diseases, which include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), kuru and BSE, are caused by infectious proteins that spread to the brain. They usually occur spontaneously, but more rarely can occur due to a genetic mutation or can be transmitted through infected brain or nerve tissue.
In the journal Nature Medicine, Collinge and colleagues report how between 1959 and 1985, at least 1,848 patients in Britain received human growth hormones extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers.
80 cases in the UK
However, the practice was banned in 1985 after some patients later died of CJD as a result of hormone samples contaminated with CJD-causing proteins. Of the 80 such cases in the UK, some were also found to have a protein called beta-amyloid in their brains when they died, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.
Although it was unclear whether they would have developed Alzheimer’s symptoms, other research showed that beta-amyloid was present in some of the hormone batches and that they triggered Alzheimer’s-like disease when given to mice.
Researchers reported results from all eight people referred to the National Prion Clinic between 2017 and 2022. All received human growth hormone from cadavers, according to The Guardian.
2024-02-03 15:00:00
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