{"id":90874,"date":"2009-12-20T12:58:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T17:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.jwatch.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=650"},"modified":"2009-12-20T12:58:34","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T17:58:34","slug":"infections-from-transplant-donors-rare-but%c2%a0inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/90874","title":{"rendered":"Infections from Transplant Donors: Rare but\u00a0Inevitable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"amoeba\"Two kidney transplant patients are critically ill due to Balamuthia mandrillaris <\/em>encephalitis they acquired from the organ donor<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The same infection probably killed the organ donor, but it was not diagnosed; his doctors thought he had an autoimmune disease. Two other patients also received heart and liver transplants from the donor, but neither has become ill.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Infections due to free-living amoeba are extremely rare; those acquired from transplant even more so.<\/p>\n

Hence the lesson from these transplant-related cases is not that there’s a new threat to the health of transplant recipients.<\/p>\n

But it’s a reminder that the infection risk will never be zero. \u00a0We cannot test donors for every possible disease, and the shortage of available organs means that some donor-derived infections will inevitably continue.<\/p>\n

(These LCMV cases<\/a> caused quite the stir around here a few years ago.)<\/p>\n

Organ transplantation remains one of the great miracles of medicine. \u00a0With the caveat that I don’t know further details about this donor’s case, it seems that a (small) risk of donor-derived infection is the price of doing business.<\/p>\n

(Edit:\u00a0 And now the WSJ <\/em>has weighed in here.<\/a> Focus is on those harmed by the infection, understandably, and the need to make the process safer — but the fact remains that transplant will never be 100% safe.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two kidney transplant patients are critically ill due to Balamuthia mandrillaris encephalitis they acquired from the organ donor: The same infection probably killed the organ donor, but it was not diagnosed; his doctors thought he had an autoimmune disease. Two other patients also received heart and liver transplants from the donor, but neither has become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}