How does vCJD differ from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)?
Both variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and CJD cause progressive degeneration of the brain leading to death. However, the variant form—never seen before 1994—usually affects persons much younger than other forms of CJD. Unlike CJD, vCJD has been acquired by food exposure and transmitted by blood transfusion. vCJD also has somewhat different clinical symptoms, a longer survival after onset of illness (the majority of illnesses lasting more than one year), and produces a characteristic abnormality in brain tissue called “florid plaques” rarely if ever seen in the other forms. How many people in the US use pdFVIII products? Approximately 2,500 people with hemophilia A and 250 people with severe von Willebrand disease use pdFVIII products in the US. PdFVIII is manufactured from the plasma of thousands of blood donors and is used to prevent or treat bleeding episodes. Is it known that pdFVIII can transmit vCJD? No. However, pdFVIII is made from plasma. Plasma is the liquid part of bl
