A Dublin man has died from CJD two decades after being treated with growth hormone made from pituitary glands removed in post-mortems.
Mr Jimmy Hamilton (39), an Irish Times employee, was one of 28 teenagers treated with human growth hormone at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, between 1974 and 1985.
The hospital said last night that it is contacting the other 27 people to offer them information and counselling as necessary. Dr Michael Hutchinson, of the National CJD Surveillance Committee, said the risk of infection is about one in 200 for the people concerned and has not worsened as a result of Mr Hamilton's death.
The hospital has set up a helpline at 012694533 for people treated with growth hormone before 1985. The Eastern Regional Health Authority has set up a freephone helpline for anyone with concerns about human growth hormone treatment at 1800 383800. This helpline will be in operation today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The treatment to reverse stunted growth was a standard one internationally. But deaths in the US, caused by the contamination of the hormone with CJD from one or more donors, led to its abandonment in 1985. There have since been 38 deaths in the UK out of 1,880 people treated.
Mr Hamilton is the only person who received the treatment here to have died. Dr Hutchinson said yesterday that, for most of them, the incubation period, which is up to 20 years, had already passed without any symptoms.
Dr Andrew Heffernan, now retired, who administered the hormone to Mr Hamilton and others in St Vincent's, said the human growth hormone was supplied by the Medical Research Council in Britain.
In 1996, the High Court in Britain ruled that the health department there had been negligent in not acting on warnings given in 1977 to the Medical Research Council about the risk of contracting CJD.
Batches of hormone prepared by the method involved in the CJD cases continued to be supplied even after a safer method was introduced in 1980, according to research published in the journal Neurology. This was because of supply problems, the researchers found.
The patients in at least 35 cases of CJD from human growth hormone in the UK, "received at least some of this hormone during treatment", it says. The form of CJD involved in these cases differs from variant CJD. The latter is linked solely to BSE in cattle.
People who had been administered the human growth hormone were subsequently called in by Dr Heffernan if they could be contacted, he said. The treatment was administered in Dublin and Belfast according to strict clinical and biochemical criteria, he said. In some cases, families were very upset because they were turned down for treatment, he added.
Mr Hamilton, who worked in the management information systems section of The Irish Times, and who had been with the company since he was in his teens, began to develop symptoms about a year ago.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
