Certified Clinical Transplant Nurse (CCTN) Practice Exam 2025 – Comprehensive All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

The statement regarding synthetic growth hormone and the risk for prion disease is false. Synthetic growth hormone, which is produced through recombinant DNA technology, does not carry the same risk for prion diseases that natural human growth hormone did when it was derived from cadaveric sources.

Prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are associated with the misfolding of prion proteins and have been linked to the use of human-derived growth hormone extracted from pituitary glands of deceased individuals. This risk does not apply to synthetic growth hormones, as they are made in controlled laboratory environments and are not derived from human tissue.

Understanding this distinction is essential for clinical practice concerning transplant patients and growth hormone therapies, emphasizing the safety profile of synthetic hormones compared to their natural counterparts used prior to the development of recombinant technologies.