Four die of rabies in transplanted tissues
By Ben Harder
Five people recently received tissue transplants from a man who had died, as it turns out, from an undiagnosed rabies infection. All the recipients have since died, four of them from the incurable neurological disease.
The donor was hospitalized in Texas in early May and diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage. He died soon afterward, and physicians attributed his death to noninfectious causes. His family agreed to donate his organs, and physicians at the hospital screened his blood for a standard set of pathogens that doesn’t include the rabies virus.