Even More Evidence That Alzheimer’s Was Being Spread by Now-Banned Injections

The practice of injecting children with growth hormone extracted from the brains of deceased people was abandoned long ago – with good reason.

Around 200 children who underwent this procedure during 1959–1985 to treat short stature developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease decades later – a deadly, degenerative brain condition caused by a misfolded protein known as a prion.

Now, a study has provided more evidence that these injections might also have seeded Alzheimer’s disease.

Such person-to-person transmissions of Alzheimer’s disease would be extremely rare as they require direct contact with brain fluid.

But instruments used in neurosurgery should be decontaminated to avoid transferring Alzheimer’s proteins between patients, the researchers say. Standard sanitization techniques like boiling, drying, or soaking in formaldehyde don’t remove prions.

Neurologist John Collinge from the University College London Institute of Prion Diseases and his colleagues have suspected for some time that injections of pituitary-derived growth hormone from cadavers might have transmitted dementia.