Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Oct;96(10):E1666-9.
doi: 10.1210/jc.2011-1357. Epub 2011 Aug 3.

Lower risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in pituitary growth hormone recipients initiating treatment after 1977

Joseph Y Abrams  1 , Lawrence B Schonberger, Ermias D Belay, Ryan A Maddox, Ellen W Leschek, James L Mills, Diane K Wysowski, Judith E Fradkin
Affiliations

Lower risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in pituitary growth hormone recipients initiating treatment after 1977

Joseph Y Abrams et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

Context: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) caused by contaminated cadaveric pituitary-derived human GH (hGH) has been responsible for hundreds of deaths worldwide. Studies of U.S. National Hormone and Pituitary Program (NHPP) hGH recipients have found CJD only in patients treated before 1977, when a new purification procedure with column chromatography was implemented for hGH extraction.

Objective: Our objective was to provide updated information on transmission of CJD to NHPP hGH recipients and determine whether recipients of hGH produced after 1977 had a significantly lower CJD risk than pre-1977 recipients.

Patients: A total of 5570 NHPP hGH recipients were included in the study: 2099 in the pre-1977 cohort and 3471 in the post-1977 cohort.

Main outcome measure: We used probability distribution functions to determine whether the observed number of CJD cases in the post-1977 cohort was significantly fewer than expected if the CJD risk was equal to that of the pre-1977 cohort, controlling for treatment duration and follow-up time.

Results: All 22 CJD cases (diagnosed from 1984-2009) occurred in the pre-1977 hGH recipients. Almost half (47.9%) of pre-1977 recipients had a treatment duration of at least 5 yr compared with only 13.8% for post-1977 recipients. Based on the rates present in the pre-1977 cohort, the probability of observing no cases in the post-1977 cohort by chance alone was low (P = 0.0019).

Conclusions: Risk of acquiring CJD was significantly lower for post-1977 NHPP hGH recipients than for pre-1977 recipients, suggesting that the new purification procedure in 1977 may have greatly reduced or eliminated CJD agent in hGH.

PubMed Disclaimer