Transplant patient got AIDS from new kidney!

A transplant patient contracted AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, in the first documented case of its kind in the U.S. since screening for HIV began in the mid-1980s.

It turns out the donor had unprotected gay sex in the 11 weeks between the time he tested negative and the time the surgery took place in 2009.

In a report Thursday on the New York City case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery.

“The most sensitive test needs to be done as close as possible to the time of transplant,” said Dr. Colin Shepard, who oversees tracking of HIV cases for the New York City Health Department.

The CDC also said would-be organ donors should be told to avoid behavior that can increase their chances of infection.

Living organ donors in the U.S. are routinely tested for infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. But the organization that oversees organ transplants in the U.S. does not have an explicit policy on when such screening should be done. That’s left up to transplant centers.

Because of patient confidentiality, health officials released few details about the donor, recipient, their relationship or the hospital where the transplant took place, except to say that it is in New York.

Neither the donor nor the recipient knew he or she had HIV until about a year after the transplant, according to the CDC report.

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