NBC News
A Michigan resident who received a transplant in December died after infected with rage for the new body he received, the State Health Department said Wednesday.
“A public health investigation determined that they contracted rage through the transplanted body,” Lynn Sutfin, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement.
The patient received the transplant in an Ohio hospital in December, and then died in January, the department said. The statement did not include information about the identity of the receiver or the type of organ that was transplanted. The donor was not a resident of Michigan or Ohio, as said.
Sutfin expanded that the health departments of Michigan and Ohio “worked in close collaboration” with each other and with the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC, in English) in the patient’s death investigation. The rage laboratory of the CDC confirmed the diagnosis.
“Health officials worked together to ensure that people, including medical care providers, who were in contact with Michigan’s individual were evaluated to detect possible exposure to rage,” the statement added.
The department refused to provide additional information to NBC News. The Ohio Department of Health and the CDC did not respond to requests for comments.
Rabies can be transmitted to humans If they come into contact with saliva or blood of infected animalssuch as bats, mapaches, motifs or street dogs. It is not always known immediately if a person has contracted rage, since the initial symptoms are similar to those of the flu, such as fever, headache and nausea. As the disease progresses, patients experience difficulty swallowing, excessive salivation and hallucinations.
If a person does not seek medical attention quickly after being scratched or bitten by a potentially infected animal, the rage is deadly. Before 1960, several hundred people died of it every year, but the annual number has been reduced to less than 10 in recent years, according to CDC.
In the United States, possible organ donors undergo virus detection, bacteria and other infections; However, anger is not usually among those tests, in part because the test to detect it takes too much time and because infection is very rare in people.
A patient who received a kidney transplant in 2013 died similarly after having contracted rage through the organ. It was discovered that the donor had died of rage in Florida, But the cause of death was discovered only after of an investigation on the death of the receiver. Three other patients also received donor organs.
In 2004, three transplant receptors died of rage after receiving organs from a donor infected with Arkansas.
