A Michigan man who received a kidney transplant died last December after contracting rabies from an organ donor who also died from the disease, the CDC said in a Dec. 4 report.
Four notes:
1. In December 2024, a Michigan man received a kidney transplant from an Idaho donor at an unnamed Ohio hospital. Five weeks later, the recipient started to experience tremors, lower extremity weakness, confusion and urinary incontinence. A week after the symptoms began, the man was hospitalized with fever and fear of water. He died after seven days in the hospital.
2. On day four of the recipient’s hospitalization, clinicians consulted the Ohio Department of Health and CDC, noting his symptoms were consistent with rabies. Further investigation confirmed the deceased donor had been scratched by a skunk about six weeks before he died. He developed telltale signs of rabies before suffering a heart attack and died several days later while hospitalized. Subsequent biopsy testing on the man’s kidney that had not been transplanted tested positive for rabies.
3. The Idaho man’s corneas were also donated and used for ocular grafts in three patients. Those patients had their grafts removed and one tested positive for rabies, according to the CDC report. The patients received postexposure prophylaxis and none experienced symptoms. The donor’s heart and lungs were never transplanted, though were used in training procedures at a research facility in Maryland.
4. Since 1978, only four donors have transmitted rabies to organ transplant recipients in the U.S., the CDC said. Donor organs typically do not undergo pathogen testing for rabies because of the disease’s “rarity in humans in the U.S. and the complexity of diagnostic testing,” federal officials said. Fewer than 10 people die from rabies in the U.S. every year, according to the CDC.
