Virus found in pig heart used in first animal-to-human transplant in US
Zee News
A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr, died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant.
New York: Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harboured an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man's death.
A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr, died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise - viral DNA inside the pig heart.
They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection.
But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that they could introduce new kinds of infections to people.
Because some viruses are ‘latent’, meaning they lurk without causing disease, ‘it could be a hitchhiker,’ Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed Bennett's transplant, told The Associated Press.
