Organ donor spreads rabies

Three transplant patients have caught rabies through infected donor organs.

They are critically ill in Hanover and Marburg and are not expected to survive, according to the German Organ Donation Foundation.

There is no effective treatment once the neurological symptoms emerge.

It is the first time in Europe that donated organs have passed on rabies to transplant recipients. There has been only one other similar case and that was in America.

Three other patients in Mainz and Heidelberg received organs from the same donor but have not shown symptoms so far.

The donor was a 26-year-old woman who is believed to have been bitten by an infected animal while on holiday in India. She died in December of a heart attack induced by a cocaine and ecstasy binge.

She was in India in October, a country with between 30,000 and 50,000 rabies deaths each year. The incubation period of rabies is 20 to 90 days but can last much longer.

"Unfortunately it is medically not possible to exclude such rare infections in advance, despite comprehensive investigations of the organ donor," said Professor Guenter Kirsten. A hospital in Hanover said that one female patient is already in a critical condition and fighting for life.

A woman who received the infected woman's corneas in Mainz has had them removed and replaced.

The other victims with no signs of the disease will also have the transplanted organs replaced.

Rabies is a virus that gets into the central nervous system via the nerves in the skin and surrounding tissues around the bite.

The first symptoms are usually those of any flu-like illness, headache, sore throat and fever and sometimes numbness, tingling or itching around the bite mark.

Soon the brain swells with symptoms including confusion, anxiety, agitation, and hallucinations.

An increase in the amount of saliva causes the mouth to foam.

These symptoms may last for seven to 10 days and are followed by coma. Death is usually due to heart failure or to an inability to breathe.