Man dies of rabies from kidney transplant in Michigan after donor fought skunk to save a kitten

ATLANTA, Dec 10 — In what health officials are calling an “exceptionally rare event,” a Michigan man has died of rabies after receiving a kidney from a donor who had unknowingly contracted the disease when he was scratched by a rabid skunk while defending a kitten.

The tragic case, detailed in a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), outlines a “likely three-step transmission chain” from a bat to a skunk, to an organ donor, and finally to the transplant recipient, The Guardian reported.

The medical mystery began when the Michigan patient, who had received a kidney transplant in December 2024, was hospitalised five weeks later with tremors, confusion, and weakness. 

He died shortly after, and postmortem testing confirmed rabies, baffling doctors as his family insisted he had no exposure to animals.

Investigators then turned to the kidney donor, a man from Idaho. A review of his records revealed a seemingly minor detail: he had been scratched by a skunk in October 2024. 

His family explained that while holding a kitten on his property, a skunk had approached with “predatory aggression,” and he had fought it off, receiving a scratch on his shin in the process. He did not believe he had been bitten.

Five weeks later, the man was found unresponsive at home after a presumed cardiac arrest and was later declared brain-dead.

While initial lab samples from the donor tested negative for rabies, investigators later tested a biopsy sample from the donated kidney itself. 

It came back positive for a strain of rabies “consistent with a silver-haired bat,” confirming that the donor had died of the disease and had passed it to the recipient through the transplant.

The CDC noted this was only the fourth reported case of transplant-transmitted rabies in the US since 1978. Rabies is not part of routine donor screening due to its rarity in humans.

Three other individuals who received cornea grafts from the same donor had the grafts immediately removed and were successfully treated with Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) to prevent infection. They remain asymptomatic.