The woman, who has not been named by the CDC, donated four of her organs, which were transplanted at various hospitals into four people in Florida and Georgia. One of the transplant recipients, a 71-year-old man, died Aug. 29 of encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that is the most severe of the virus' possible symptoms. Two of the other recipients appear to have encephalitis, and the fourth has a fever, CDC officials said. James Hughes, director of CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, said the organ donor received numerous blood transfusions before she died. He said the CDC hopes to determine from the tests at Fort Collins whether she contracted West Nile virus from those transfusions.
In addition, he said, the CDC and health officials in Georgia and Florida are trying to determine whether the four transplant recipients have the virus and, if so, how they got it. So far, only one of the organ recipients, a Florida man who received the woman's heart, has a confirmed case of the disease. But another recipient, a man who died Aug. 29, tested positive for exposure to Flavi viruses, the family to which West Nile belongs. All 638 known cases of West Nile in the United States this year, including 31 deaths, are believed to have resulted from mosquito bites.***