Pig’s heart transplanted to US patient earlier this year carried pig virus [1] « who may have caused the experiment to fail and contributed to his death two months later » (cf. Death of the patient who had received a pig’s heart).
A ” forty days David Bennett’s condition deteriorated after the transplant. Following his death, no obvious cause had not been identified according to a statement from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The cause of death ?
This is during a webinar from theAmerican Society of Transplantationon April 20, that his surgeon, Bartley Griffith, revealed the presence of this virus and what had been attempted to defeat it.
Doctors have indeed been confronted with a “ common problem in transplant medicine: “ how to fight infections while keeping the patient’s immune system under control » (cf. Organ transplant: daily life at risk for the immunocompromised). But in the case of David Bennett, they didn’t know ” the true extent of the infection ». Et « no one had ever treated a human for this particular pig virus ».
The question is now the subject of a wide debate among specialists who believe the infection may have contributed to the patient’s death. The biotech company that supplied the pig’s heart, Revivicordeclined to comment and made no public statement.
A questioning of xenografts?
The type of virus found in transplanted pig hearts would not be able to infect human cells, according to Jay Fishman, a specialist in transplant-related infections at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Still, virus transfer from pigs to humans raises concerns. In effect, ” some fear xenotransplantation could trigger a pandemic if a virus adapts in a patient’s body and then spreads to doctors and nurses “. A worry ” severe enough to require lifelong monitoring of patients ».
« This is an important red flag says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. ” If doctors can’t prevent or control infection, ‘then such experiments are hard to justify’ “, he believes.
[1] porcine cytomegalovirus
Source : MIT, Antonio Regalado (05/04/2022)