Federal and local officials are investigating

By Jeremy Manier | Tribune staff reporter
November 14, 2007
Federal and local officials are investigating whether four Chicago patients who contracted HIV from organ transplants could have passed on the disease during the months when they were unaware of their infections, health officials said Tuesday.

The four patients contracted HIV and hepatitis C from an infected donor in January and did not know of the potential risk to their partners and close contacts until they tested positive for the diseases in the last two weeks. The infected donor had not tested positive for the diseases, likely because the infections were too recent to register on screening tests, officials believe.

The risk to others could have been reduced had the hospitals tested the organ recipients soon after their transplants, said Dr. Matthew Kuehnert, director of blood, organ and tissue safety with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kuehnert said he was concerned that none of the affected hospitals -- Rush University Medical Center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the University of Chicago Medical Center -- appeared to have followed CDC guidelines for testing at-risk patients after a transplant.