Tests Confirm Organ Donor Had West Nile
Virus may have lived in transplanted organs, blood transfusions donor received

September 4, 2002
By Steve Sternberg and Anita Manning, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Tests have confirmed West Nile virus in an organ donor and three people who received transplants from her, federal experts said Tuesday.

The donor received transfusions, raising concerns that the mosquito-borne virus can be transmitted through the blood supply.

The virus may also have dwelled in the transplanted organs.

Even so, health officials can't rule out the possibility that all four people, from Georgia and Florida, were infected by mosquitoes. One of the four, a Georgia man who received a kidney, has died.

A Florida woman — the fourth organ recipient — also developed West Nile symptoms, but lab confirmation is not yet available.

She is at home recuperating.

"If this resulted from organ transplantation, as it appears to have, the organ donor was the source," said James Hughes of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But these patients all lived in areas where mosquito-borne transmission of West Nile virus is occurring. It's important that we not jump to conclusions," said Hughes, director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases.

The donor died Aug. 1 after a car crash. Before her death, she received multiple blood transfusions as doctors worked to save her life.

CDC officials say that blood was drawn — and in some instances pooled — from more than 60 donors, any of whom might have been infected with West Nile. Before the cases surfaced, and the Food and Drug Administration recalled all blood taken from those donors, more than a dozen other people were given potentially tainted blood.

Health officials are attempting to test all remaining samples of that blood for the virus. They are also trying to test the blood donors to see whether any of those people show evidence of infection, said Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC.

Though blood is tested for viruses such as hepatitis and HIV, "the tests for West Nile that would work in a blood center do not exist," said Louis Katz, acting vice president of America's Blood Centers, which collects about half the nation's blood supply. It would take months, maybe years, to develop such a test, he said.

Katz said that the blood supply is safe, and that the blood banks and the government will take whatever steps are needed to keep it that way. "Fortunately, with West Nile virus, which tends to go away in September, we're going to have the fall and winter to make decisions," he said.

All blood banks are required by the FDA to take donors' temperatures before they take their blood, and anyone with symptoms of illness is asked to come back when they've recovered, Katz said. But about 80% of people infected with West Nile virus have no symptoms and could give blood while the virus is circulating.

"We can ask if they've been exposed to mosquitoes," which carry the virus, he said, but "everybody's been exposed to mosquitoes."

About one of every 150 people who get West Nile through a mosquito bite develop life-threatening West Nile encephalitis. Typically, they are people who are older than 50 or suffer from a condition that weakens their immunity, such as a recent transplant.

Also Tuesday, officials reported six new deaths from West Nile virus in Tennessee, Illinois and New York. That lifts the recorded death toll this year to 37.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-09-03-west-nile-donor_x.htm