Two men in China died of rabies after receiving kidney transplants from an infected donor, according to Chinese medical researchers.
Last summer, a 55-year-old man from Hebei province near Beijing and a 43-year-old man from Liaoning province in the country’s far northeast died after receiving organs from the cadaver of a 6-year-old boy who had suffered from undiagnosed encephalitis, the researchers reported in the most recent issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Rabies transmission through organ transplantation has also occurred in the United States, but it is extremely rare.
“When I looked at the report, my first reaction was, ‘This is really rare, and also kind of unfortunate,’ ” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine. “My second was, ‘Well, would we actually be comfortable with transplanting, in this particular case, if it happened here in the U.S.?’ And I’d probably be nervous about that particular donor.”
The boy, who lived in mostly rural southwestern Guangxi province, contracted a fever on May 13, 2015, according to the article. Two days later, with the fever still raging, he “showed additional symptoms of extreme irritability, screaming, and slurred speech.” By Day 3, he was foaming at the mouth.
The boy was moved to another hospital, where he entered a coma. He died 10 days later.
The body tested negative for HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis, so doctors determined that his organs were adequately safe for transplantation, and collected his kidneys and corneas. No autopsy was performed.
The man from Hebei received a kidney on May 27, 2015, in Beijing. That July, a fever and “mild abdominal distention” quickly developed into something worse — he began to lose his hearing, and speak incoherently. Doctors suspected rabies, and later, confirmed the diagnosis. He died Aug. 23.
The second recipient, from Liaoning, showed many of the same symptoms. He died on Aug. 17. Realizing that the boy may have had rabies, medical authorities alerted two people in southern China who had received the boy’s corneas. Neither had developed symptoms of rabies, but both were treated for the virus as a precaution.
