By Wanique Block
A 57-year-old American man has died two months after receiving a pig heart transplant.
David Benner Snr who suffered from terminal heart disease was the worlds first heart transplant patient to receive a heart from a genetically modified pig.
The first of its kind transplant took place earlier this year and was said to be a historic moment for medicine around the world. Although a historic moment, what may have seemed like hope for medicine, quickly took a turn when the pig heart recipient died two months after the transplant.
According to a report in MIT Technology Review, the pig heart carried a virus that contributed to David’s sudden deterioration.
According to David’s surgeon, Dr. Bartley Griffith of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, there was no evidence that the patient developed an active infection with the virus, nor was there evidence that his body rejected the heart.
Joachim Denner of the Institute of Virology at the Free University of Berlin, who led that study, says the solution to the problem is more accurate testing.
“It’s a latent virus and hard to detect, but if you test the animal better, it will not happen. The virus can be detected and easily removed from pig populations, but unfortunately they didn’t use a good assay and didn’t detect the virus, and this was the reason. The donor pig was infected, and the virus was transmitted by the transplant”, said Denner.
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