Iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Over the past 2 years, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has affected several patients who received cadaver pituitary-derived growth hormone (pit-hGH) and one patient who received a cadaveric dura mater graft. The risk of iatrogenic transmission of CJD has long been recognized, but until recently, the low prevalence of the disorder and minimal use of therapeutic products derived from human tissues may have limited the risk. From 1963 to 1985, approximately 10,000 children received pit-hGH. These patients, exposed to pooled products potentially contaminated with the CJD agent, may have significantly increased the number of individuals whose blood and tissues could transmit CJD. This possibility as well as data on the pathophysiology of CJD and scrapie, a related disease of animals, should guide the development of practices that would limit iatrogenic spread of CJD.