Friday, December 3, 2010

ME/CFS and the Red Cross

From a Red Cross press release:
At present, there are no specific federal recommendations regarding deferral of individuals with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or other diseases that have been associated with Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus (XMRV) infection. Nevertheless, in the interest of patient and donor safety, the American Red Cross will defer indefinitely any donor who reveals during the donor interview that they have been diagnosed with CFS.
'bout time. Of course, people who know they have ME/CFS probably haven't been giving blood in droves. Even if they weren't worried about transmitting the disease, blood donation isn't going to be much of a priority for those who feel like crap all the time.

The big concern is the healthy 4–7 percent of the population infected with XMRV or other MLVs. The vast majority of them don't know they're infected, and the Red Cross isn't yet testing for MLVs the way they do for HIV.

That's the next step.

1 comment:

Pris said...

Yes, hopefully one day that'll be a routine screening. I never gave blood because the doctors mistakenly thought I had hepatitis when I was in grade school. I didn't, but if you say you've ever been diagnosed with it they don't want your blood, so the blood supply lucked out. And no, after we're sick we're giving our excess blood to doctors.