In what the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) called “an extremely rare event,” an adult Michigan man became infected with rabies following a kidney transplant. According to a CDC report, the man received a left kidney from a deceased donor in Idaho in December 2024. The procedure went perfectly, and the patient made a full recovery, but just over five weeks later, he started experiencing worrying symptoms.

The unnamed kidney recipient first started experiencing tremors, leg weakness, confusion, and urinary incontinence, but things only got worse. Within days, he was hospitalized with fever, difficulty swallowing, signs of hydrophobia, and autonomic nervous system dysfunction. He soon had to be mechanically ventilated because he couldn’t breathe by himself, and died a week into his hospitalization.

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Tests conducted after the man’s shocking death revealed the presence of the rabies virus in his saliva, neck skin, and brain tissue. This made no sense because the man’s family claimed he had no known contact with animals that could transmit the disease. That’s when investigators started looking into his kidney donor.

It turned out that the kidney had come from an Idaho man who had been declared brain-dead after several days in intensive care. His donor risk assessment questionnaire indicated that he had suffered a skunk scratch weeks before going into a coma from which he never woke up.

The organ donor’s family recalled that several weeks before his death, the man fought off a skunk to protect a kitten on his Idaho farm. Although he reported no bites, the man did come out of the encounter with a scratch on his shin. Within five weeks of the incident, the man began to show signs of confusion, difficulty walking and swallowing, neck stiffness, and hallucinations. Two days later, he was found unconscious at his home, and despite doctors’ best efforts, he never regained consciousness.

Photo: ChatGPT

After being declared brain-dead, the family began arranging organ donations. His left kidney, his heart, lungs, and both corneas were recovered. Interestingly, rabies tests came back negative, and his bizarre symptoms were eventually attributed to other chronic conditions. However, after the death of his kidney recipient, the CDC approved further tests on stored samples, and this time around, doctors found rabies virus RNA in a biopsy of his right kidney.

After confirming the presence of the rabies virus, three people in California, Idaho, and New Mexico who had received corneal transplants from the same donor between December 2024 and January 2025 needed to have their transplants removed. They also received rabies immunoglobulin and four doses of vaccine, and none of them developed any symptoms.

Despite the shocking nature of this case, the CDC noted that the risk of contracting rabies or other infections through organ or tissue transplantation remains extremely low. Only four transplant-transmitted rabies events have been documented in the United States since 1978.