An NIH panel is set to convene an urgent meeting amid fears thousands of Americans could be at risk of catching Alzheimer’s.
A bombshell UK study published Monday found evidence of at least five people ‘catching’ the memory-robbing disorder from a now-banned hormone treatment.
Health experts in the US — where nearly 8,000 children were injected with the therapy in the 1960s and 1980s — now fear cases may have gone undetected on this side of the Atlantic.
A spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told DailyMail.com: ‘Given this new information, the committee will convene to discuss the issue and re-analyze data for any possible associations with Alzheimer’s or dementia-related conditions.’
DailyMail.com understands the meeting will take place in early February among the Public Health Service Interagency Coordinating Committee on Human Growth Hormone and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
It was set up in the hours after the UK study was released and aims to re-assess US data for signs that patients developed Alzheimer’s disease.
It will also look at rates of early-onset Alzheimer’s, when the disease develops before the age of 65 years, among receivers of the faulty growth hormone treatments.
Minutes from previous meetings show the committee has suspected that at least one American died from Alzheimer’s in their 60s after receiving the jab as a child.
Hellbound and Down 