Federal health officials have confirmed that a Michigan man died from rabies after receiving a kidney transplant from a donor who had unknowingly contracted the virus after being scratched by a skunk.
According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the kidney transplant took place at an Ohio hospital in December 2024. The procedure initially appeared successful, but around five weeks later, the recipient began developing severe neurological symptoms.
The man started experiencing tremors, weakness in his legs, confusion, and urinary incontinence. His condition quickly worsened, leading to hospitalization and ventilation. Despite medical efforts, he later died.
Postmortem testing confirmed rabies — a diagnosis that stunned doctors and family members, especially since the recipient had no known contact with animals or wildlife.
Doctors then reviewed medical records related to the kidney donor, a man from Idaho. In the donor’s risk assessment interview, investigators found a detail that initially seemed insignificant: the donor had reported being scratched by a skunk.
When officials followed up with the donor’s family, they learned that the incident occurred in October, a couple of months before his death. While holding a kitten in a shed on his rural property, the donor was confronted by a skunk showing what was described as “predatory aggression” toward the animal.
The donor fought off the skunk and reportedly knocked it unconscious, but not before the skunk scratched his shin and caused bleeding. He did not believe he had been bitten.
Within weeks of the encounter, the donor began showing troubling symptoms, including difficulty swallowing, problems walking, confusion, hallucinations, and neck stiffness. His condition was initially attributed to existing health issues.
He later collapsed at home following what was believed to be a cardiac arrest. Although he was resuscitated and hospitalized, he never regained consciousness and was declared brain-dead. Several of his organs, including a kidney, were donated.
Rabies is not routinely screened for in organ donors due to its extreme rarity in humans and the complexity of testing. Initial laboratory samples from the donor tested negative. However, biopsies taken directly from kidney tissue later detected a rabies strain consistent with silver-haired bats.
Investigators believe the infection followed a rare three-step transmission chain: a bat infected a skunk, the skunk infected the donor, and the donor’s kidney transmitted the virus to the transplant recipient.
This is only the fourth known case of transplant-transmitted rabies in the United States since 1978. The CDC emphasized that the overall risk of rabies or other infections being transmitted through organ transplantation remains extremely low and described the incident as an “exceptionally rare event.”
Authorities also discovered that three other individuals had received cornea grafts from the same donor. Those grafts were immediately removed, and all three recipients were given post-exposure prophylaxis. None of them developed symptoms, according to the report.
