This topic had some airtime on UK Breakfast T V , causing dub family members to feel justified in their refusal to accept blood .
However, the medical doctors quickly debunked the "sensationalist" conclusions that journalists had reached from this very small study.
Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research at Alzheimer's Society, said:
'While these findings are interesting and warrant further investigation, there are too many unknowns in this small, observational study of eight brains to draw any conclusions about whether Alzheimer's disease can be transmitted this way.
'Notably, while seven of the eight brains studied had beta-amyloid deposits - a protein found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease - the presence of this alone does not mean that they would have gone on to develop the disease.
'Injections of growth hormone taken from human brains were stopped in the 1980s. There remains absolutely no evidence that Alzheimer's disease is contagious or can be transmitted from person to person via any current medical or dental procedures.
Webpage: The Alzheimer's Society