According to surgeon Bartley Griffith, it is not certain that the virus was directly responsible for the death of this 57-year-old patient last March. It is possible, according to the doctor who confided in the New York Times that the virus had no effect on the patient. According to another doctor interviewed by USA Today, the virus could be one of the main factors contributing to the death.
Last January, David Bennett was the first patient to have a pig heart transplant. The operation took place in Baltimore, USA. Her condition initially stabilized after the operation but a month later she had deteriorated. The 50-year-old died in early March.
Experts saw this operation as a major breakthrough in xenografting, a transplant between different species. Pigs are particularly indicated as donors because their metabolism is very similar to that of humans.
The pig from which the transplanted heart came had been raised and genetically modified by a specialized company. The organ had been tested multiple times for its reaction to viruses. But according to the New York Times, these tests were only intended to detect active pathogens, which the cytomegalovirus found would not have been.