- ATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S.
health officials are investigating whether four patients in Georgia and
Florida may have been infected with West Nile virus through donated organs.
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- Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters on Sunday that the agency
is working with health officials in Florida to determine if the organ transplant
patients have West Nile, and whether they could have acquired the disease
through organ donation.
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- If confirmed, it would mark the first recorded case of
West Nile transmitted by something other than a mosquito.
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- Skinner said the investigation was publicized after the
disclosure late Friday that a 63-year-old Florida man in critical condition
at a Miami hospital was confirmed to have West Nile infection.
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- The man received a donated heart from a woman who died
in Georgia after a car crash last month, but officials don't know if the
heart or the donor carried West Nile.
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- The CDC said three other people also received donated
organs from the woman who died in Georgia. West Nile virus has so far been
confirmed in just one of the four patients who were given donated organs
from the dead woman, it added.
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- West Nile, which can cause encephalitis, a severe brain
inflammation, has so far been officially blamed for 28 deaths this year
in 10 U.S. states by the CDC.
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- Humans can catch the disease from mosquitoes that have
bitten infected animals, usually birds. Victims can suffer flu-like symptoms
and, in the worst cases, encephalitis.
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- While the virus is common in Africa and Asia, it did
not come to the United States until a 1999 outbreak that killed seven people
in the New York borough of Queens.
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- At least 41 states, stretching from Maine to New Mexico,
and the District of Columbia, have reported West Nile activity this year.
The virus has also been detected in Canada.
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