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CDC Investigating Possible West Nile Spread Through Transplants

Aired September 02, 2002 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: New fears today about the spread of the West Nile virus. Health authorities are investigating the possible transmission of West Nile through blood and organ donation, since four illnesses were possibly linked to a single organ donor.
CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now with the latest on this story -- boy, it just gets a little more scary by the day, doesn't it?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It sounds scary, and it is a little scary, but possibly not quite as scary as it sounds. We'll talk about that. Before a couple of days ago, it was -- West Nile virus had only been seen transmitted from mosquito to person, not person to person, and now it seems like there might be a case of one person donating her organs and giving it possibly to four people.

Let's take a look at exactly what might have happened. It all starts with an accident victim in Georgia. After she died, her organs were donated to four different people. Now, one of those people has died. This person developed encephalitis, died, an autopsy showed a disease consistent with West Nile virus disease. The second person, also developed encephalitis, is still alive, lab results show that this person had West Nile disease. The third person also has encephalitis. Lab results are still pending. They don't quite know what it is. The fourth person developed a mild fever, and lab results, again, are also pending.

Now, that's the situation as we know it, as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control, and it might end there, and this would obviously be a horrible story for those four people, but could it could end with those four people because her body parts did not go any further.

However, it might possibly get even worse, and let me explain why that is true. The woman who was in the car accident may have gotten West Nile virus from a mosquito, but she might have gotten it from blood. Before she died, she received multiple blood transfusions, 37 different people donated blood to her. And if just went to her, and it was tainted, again, maybe not such a bad story. However, there is a possibility that that -- that some of that blood might also have gone to other people, and if it did, then you might be talking about tainted blood going out to other people besides this one donor. The CDC is investigating that. Of course, that brings up the question, why don't they screen blood before -- why don't they screen blood donors to make sure that they don't have West Nile virus in the first place, and the answer to that is that unfortunately, there's no good screening test. There is no -- you can't just put the blood in a test tube and figure out if it has West Nile virus.

PHILLIPS: So there still is no way -- is anything being done now, I guess, after the fact unfortunately to screen the blood? Is there any way to do that?

COHEN: Yes. The FDA has told blood banks, Look, you need to ask people if they have had any -- in fancy terms, a feverile (ph) illness. In other words, have you had a fever now, or have you had a fever recently? If the answer to that is yes, then that person should not be allowed to give blood. There's one little hitch here, and that's that most people who carry West Nile virus in their blood, they don't have a fever. They are not sick, 80 percent of people with West Nile virus in their blood do not have any symptoms at all. Don't even know they are infected. Nineteen percent have mild symptoms, less than one percent have a serious illness.

PHILLIPS: So didn't blood banks, those who run blood banks, and the government know that this could be a risk, and think about this and do some type of -- obviously they didn't do any preemptive, right?

COHEN: Well, I asked the director of the Infectious Diseases branch at the Centers for Disease Control that question. I asked him yesterday. I said, you know, West Nile disease has been around for three years in the United States, didn't you know that this was a risk? And he said, You know, theoretically we did know that that was a risk, but he said, We make things a priority when they are documented, not when they are just theoretical, and he says if this turns out to be an organ -- a transmission through organs or a transmission through blood, then we'll make it a priority, but he said we can't make things a priority if they are just theoretical. That's what he told me.

PHILLIPS: Any type of a reaction from those at the blood banks?

COHEN: Well, the American Red Cross has said that they are not going to be answering questions today. However, the FDA has said that they are working with the CDC, they are trying to settle this all out, and figure this all out, but the real truth is that in some ways, there's not much that blood banks can do, because nobody ever developed a test, even though it has been around for three years, in those three years, nobody ever developed a test to screen it from blood.

PHILLIPS: That's the next step, for somebody to do that.

COHEN: That is right. Someone could make a lot of money and be a real medical hero if they did that. Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: There you go. All right. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.

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