보건복지부 영문홈페이지

□ Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC; Director Jun, Byung Yool) informed that the first case of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease(iCJD) was confirmed in a patient who had received a human dura mater graft with the German-made brain tissue as results of biopsy and animal tests. 

* iCJD: CJD contracted in the process of medical treatment caused by a transplanted tissue, etc

□This first victim of iCJD in Korea is a 54-year-old woman who had received a transplant of the membrane manufactured in Germany under the trade name Lyodura in 1987. She began displaying symptoms of CJD in June 2010, 23 years after she received the dura mater graft. Initially, the patient was suspected to have contracted sporadic CJD (sCJD) and she died in Nov. 2010 while the investigation was still being conducted.  

○ It is presumed that the German-manufactured dura mater used had been taken from a cadaver of a patient infected with sCJD.

* Sporadic CJD(sCJD): It affects about one person in every one million people per year worldwide.

□ KCDC emphasized that iCJD has nothing to do with the variant CJD* and it was not contracted from the patient’s daily life but due to the transplantation of the German-made dura mater (Lyodura). It also added that then, the materials were not well controlled but now safe dura mater alternatives are being used.

* Variant CJD develops after one has eaten infected beef products from cows with BSE (Bovine Spongioform Encephalopathy ).

○ Also, it is said that since May 1987, the concerned manufacturer has been conducting a deactivation process against prions (an infectious agent composed of protein), known to cause CJD, to remove the possibility of CJD infection.

□ Around 400 cases of iCJD have been reported in 20 countries worldwide and approximately 200 cases of them broke out after the dura mater transplantations, over a half of which have taken place in Japan after the transplants of the concerned German-manufactured dura mater. The probability of developing iCJD after the brain tissue graft is 1/500 ~ 2,000.

□ According to the KCDC, a team of experts in cooperation with the Korean Neurological Association, and the Korean Neurosurgical Society, etc has been formed to trace people known to have received the surgery in the 1980s with their medical records and neurosurgical tests under their consents.

< Attachment> 1. General Info of CJD

2. Domestic CJD control status

3. Q & As