Lifeboat Foundation

The seeds of Alzheimer’s disease can be transmitted through medical procedures, scientists have found, leading experts to call for the monitoring of blood transfusions from the elderly and those with a family history of dementia.

In 2015, researchers at University College London discovered that people who developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) following treatments with human growth hormone also showed signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains after death.

The scientists tracked down vials of the same hormone and found that it did indeed contain misfolded amyloid-beta proteins, capable of setting off the deadly chain reaction which can lead to dementia.