Alzheimer’s disease can be caught from blood transfusions, operations and dental work, it is feared.
A potentially explosive study has provided the first evidence that the devastating condition can, like mad cow disease, spread through ‘medical accidents’.
The British researcher, Professor John Collinge, said we ‘need to rethink our view of Alzheimer’s and evaluate the risk of it being transmitted inadvertently to patients’.
One of the UK’s leading brain surgeons warned that we don’t know if the techniques used sterilise medical instruments are effective and said that the research ‘must be taken seriously’.
However, others urged caution, saying the study was small and it does not prove that Alzheimer’s disease is contagious.