There is no risk to 20 patients who received blood donations from three people who subsequently died of CJD, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service said yesterday.
The IBTS refused to say when the cases occurred. Three donors to date have died of classic CJD, the traditional form of the fatal brain disease which has been known for at least a century.
This form of CJD is not transmitted by blood, the IBTS said. Nevertheless, it informed the hospital doctors who administered the transfusions of blood from the donors. It is up to the doctors whether to tell the patients, a spokeswoman said.
Beyond saying that "to date" three donors had died of CJD she would not give specific information yesterday as to whether the deaths had been spread over years, months or weeks.
As only two to six people a year die from classic CJD, it is likely that the three deaths were spread over a number of years. Classic CJD mainly affects old people, but it also occurred recently in a woman in her 50s. She died last year, and her family was subsequently asked not to give blood donations although they were also told there was no risk to patients from such donations.
The cause of classic CJD is unknown. Other forms of the disease include variant CJD which is thought to be transmitted by eating products derived from cattle with BSE.
Some people who received infected human growth hormone from the 1960s also developed CJD, and there has been one case in Ireland in a man who died this year.
Most people who received the human growth hormone have not been affected by CJD, and a safe, artificial alternative has been used since 1985.