A Michigan man has died of rabies after receiving a kidney from another man who died of the disease when he was scratched by a skunk while defending a kitten, in what officials are describing as an “exceptionally rare event”.
According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Michigan patient received a kidney transplant at an Ohio hospital in December 2024.
Postmortem testing confirmed rabies, the CDC report said, baffling authorities because the recipient’s family had said he had not had any exposure to animals.
Doctors then reviewed records about the kidney donor, a man in Idaho, and discovered that in the Donor Risk Assessment Interview (DRAI) questionnaire he said he had been scratched by a skunk.
After rabies was suspected in the kidney recipient, authorities went back to test laboratory samples from the donor; they tested negative for rabies.
The investigation suggested a “likely three-step transmission chain” in which a bat infected a skunk, which infected the donor, whose kidney then infected the recipient.
Rabies is typically “excluded from routine donor pathogen testing because of its rarity in humans in the United States and the complexity of diagnostic testing”. »
![image for Eyes on ICE! [OC]](0765a5ac-bfcf-5df2-a08c-0c06beb9ae41_thumb.jpg)
![image for [OC] My breast casted an artistic shadow on the wall](63141e1d-8afd-5cc1-b9ab-c635c46adab4_thumb.jpg)
![image for I think Puddy is happy with today's Katnip delivery [OC]](f7c494af-d6ae-5e25-ae5b-81b0415c8771_thumb.jpg)