Blood transfusion transmitted HIV

— Blood products from a Missouri donor infected a Colorado kidney transplant patient in 2008 with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a federal report published Friday.

It was the nation’s only recorded case of HIV transmission from a blood transfusion in the past eight years, the report found.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report stressed that although tests scientifically confirmed the donor’s link to the Colorado patient’s HIV after that recipient’s August 2008 transplant, getting the virus from blood transfusions remains exceedingly rare. The CDC also noted that the donor didn’t reveal high-risk sexual behavior to health-care workers who questioned him before he gave blood and that his own infection was too new to be detected at the time of his first donation.

The questioned donor’s blood product - packed red blood cells - from the first of his two 2008 donations also was given to an Arkansas patient who died of heart disease two days after a transfusion during a mid-2008 surgery, though it’s unknown if that patient ended up contracting HIV, the report said.

The report, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not identify the Missouri blood center and described the questioned donor only as being in his 40s.

The report noted his positive HIV status was not confirmed until November 2008 after he donated blood a second time. The tainted blood from that donation was destroyed, and the man was indefinitely barred from additional donations, the report said.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/23/2010

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