Raccoon Bite Can Kill Three More People

Raccoon Bite Can Kill Three More People.
Rabies caused the dying of an instrument transplant recipient in Maryland, and three other patients who received organs from the same giver are getting anti-rabies shots, government health officials announced Friday. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the operation and Maryland health officials have confirmed that the patient who died in old March contracted rabies from the donated organ. The transplant was done more than a year ago.

The stretch of time the patient took to develop rabies symptoms was much longer than the typical rabies incubation years of one to three months, but is consistent with previous reports of long incubation periods, officials said in a statement. Both the element donor and the recipient had a raccoon-type rabies virus, according to the CDC's overture analysis of tissue samples. This type of rabies infects not only raccoons, but also other strange and domestic animals.

In the United States, only one other person is reported to have died from raccoon-type rabies virus. In 2011, the device donor became ill, was admitted to a hospital in Florida and then died. The donor's organs, including the kidneys, feeling and liver, were transplanted into recipients in Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Maryland.