A transfusion of blood from a Missouri man infected a Colorado kidney transplant recipient with HIV.
There are many safeguards in place to prevent these kinds of infections from happening. In addition to filling out a form of questions aimed at assessing high risk behaviors, donors must also complete a physical exam. The majority of people infected with HIV in its early stages will exhibit symptoms similar to a cold, and those symptoms would be seen during a physical.
However, there is no safeguard against lying on the donor form. According to the CDC, in June of 2008 the Missouri man donated blood, as he had done numerous times before. On his form, he failed to report any HIV risk factors, and his blood tested negative for the disease.
When donating again in November of 2008, his blood tested positive for HIV. In an interview, the married man claimed he had sex outside his marriage with both men and women. He admitted he was often drunk at the time of these hook-ups, and that they were usually with complete strangers.
The man had one of these encounters just before his June testing, but current tests cannot detect HIV within the first 10 days of infection. There is researching being done now to eliminate that lag time.
Experts say that there is no cause for alarm, as this is very much an isolated incident.
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