Suspected German rabies cases

February 16, 2005

HEIDELBERG, Germany (Reuters) - Authorities in Germany suspect three people may have been infected with rabies following organ transplants from a woman thought to have contracted the illness before her death.

The German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO), which announced the findings at a news conference in Heidelberg on Wednesday, said the condition of the patients in Hanover, Marburg and Hannoversch-Muenden was critical.

However, three other patients in Mainz und Heidelberg who had received organs from the woman were doing well and receiving treatment to prevent illness, it added.

"If there has been an infection, we can only hope that we started the active and passive immunisation on time," said Peter Sauer, head of internal medicine at the Heidelberg University clinic, which originally reported the suspected rabies case.

The DSO said it would be the first time the virus had been transmitted via transplantation in Germany, where an estimated 100,000 organs have been transplanted since 1963.

The foundation added that it was not possible for doctors to test a donor for infection in the short space of time available to them to operate once brain death has occurred.

Doctors at the Heidelberg clinic said the donor had possibly contracted the virus during a holiday in India, but had not displayed any symptoms of the virus. The woman died of heart failure after being brought to hospital in December 2004.

Rabies is a serious infection of the nervous system and is usually transmitted to humans and animals by a bite from an infected animal. Once clinical rabies develops, it is almost always fatal.

Doctors at the clinic estimate between 30,000 and 50,000 people died of rabies in India every year. They said only five cases of rabies had been recorded in Germany in the past 20 years, three of whom became infected in India.

Copyright © Reuters 2005.

This article posted March 16, 2005.