A Colorado kidney-transplant patient contracted HIV from a blood plasma transfusion — the first U.S. patient to do so in eight years, according to federal health officials.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that an unidentified Missouri blood donor supplied the plasma that infected the patient in 2008.
The CDC described the donor as being a man in his 40s who, on his first visit to donate blood, concealed from those collecting the donated blood the fact that he had had anonymous sex with men and women.
The CDC speculates that the man became infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in a small window of time just before he donated blood for the first time. That meant he had not yet developed the antibodies that would be detected when his blood was screened and then shipped to surgical centers.
One of those was in Colorado in August 2008, though the name of the facility was not identified in the CDC report. There, a patient receiving a kidney transplant was given some of the man’s plasma. The name, age and gender of the recipient were not disclosed in the CDC report.
The Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for setting safety standards in blood donation, stipulates that donation centers and blood banks do not accept blood from donors who have engaged in male-to-male sexual contact since 1977. Also permanently deferred from donating are users of illegal drugs and individuals who have accepted payment in exchange for sex.
A donor-relations specialist at the Bonfils Blood Center in Denver said that since all donors are volunteers and receive only juice and cookies for their donations, there is no reason for them to be dishonest during eligibility questioning. The CDC said that the donor in this case was not paid for his donation. Bonfils provides the majority of blood to Colorado transfusion recipients, though out-of- state blood and plasma are still used in Colorado hospitals.
The CDC report stated that a laboratory tested the infected blood for HIV during the June 2008 donation and that two tests came back negative. The man donated at the same center again that November, this time testing positive. One hundred and six days elapsed between the infected plasma transfusion in Colorado and the realization of the donor’s HIV-positive status. But an investigation found that only the Colorado patient, and another in Arkansas who died just two days later of cardiac disease, received blood products from this donor.
Dr. Joe Chaffin, the medical director at Bonfils, said that although modern tests are extremely accurate, early HIV infections can still go undetected.
“As good as our testing is, it isn’t perfect, especially in the first 10 days of an HIV infection,” Chaffin said.
The CDC said that the material from the November donation was subsequently destroyed, and the donor and recipient of the June donation notified of the situation. The recipient then tested positive for HIV. Analysis of viral samples from the donor and recipient showed that the plasma donation was the cause of the infection. Doctors placed the recipient on antiretroviral therapy, which reduced the traces of the virus in the patient’s body to undetectable levels.
The report stated that the donor initially refused to be interviewed by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, but eventually agreed and admitted to not disclosing sexual behavior that would have prevented him from donating.
The CDC says that getting the virus from blood transfusions remains exceedingly rare, estimating the risk of it happening to be about 1 in 1.5 million.
