Man who received landmark pig heart transplant died of pig virus, surgeon says

The 57-year old patient who survived a landmark pig heart transplant died of a pig virus, his transplant surgeon announced last month.

In January, David Bennett, a handyman who suffered from heart failure, underwent a highly experimental surgery at the University of Maryland medical center in which doctors transplant a genetically modified pig's heart into him.

Bennett died after the surgery. The hospital said his condition had worsened over the course of a few days but did not give an exact cause of death.

Last month, Bennett's transplant surgeon revealed that the pig's heart may have been the cause of Bennett's death. The MIT Technology Review first reported on Wednesday that on April 20th, the American Society of Transplantation hosted a webinars in which Griffith described the virus and doctors' attempts to treat it.

We are beginning to learn why he passed on, and we may know who the actor was that set this thing off.

According to experts, the transplant was a major test of xenotransplantation, a process that involves transferring tissues between multiple species. The pigs that were bred to provide organs are supposed to be free of viruses, and they believe that the experiment may have been derailed as a result.

If this was an infectious disease, we can likely prevent it in the future, according to the speaker.

The human immune system's ability to attack foreign cells in a process called rejection is the biggest challenge in animal-to-human organ transplants.

Companies have been engineering pigs by removing and adding genes to hide their tissues from potential immune attacks. Bennett's heart came from a pig that underwent 10 gene modifications, which was carried out by Revivicor.

The type of virus in Bennett's donor heart is not capable of infecting human cells, despite fears that it could cause a pandemic.

Jay Fishman, a specialist in transplant infections at Massachusetts General Hospital, says there is no real risk of it spreading to humans. The concern stems from the fact that porcine cytomegaloviruses can cause damage to the organ and the patient.

Bennett's death is not fully attributed to the virus. The patient was very, very ill according to the researcher at the Free University of Berlin. The virus may have contributed, but it was not the sole reason.

Two years ago, Denner led a study in which it was reported that pig hearts could only last for a few weeks if they contained a disease. The hearts that were free of the infection were able to live for six months.

After Bennett's surgery, his team monitored his recovery through a number of blood tests. Bennett's blood was examined by doctors and they found a small amount of porcine cytomegaloviruses in it. The doctors assumed that the result could have been an error because its levels were so low.

Doctors were unable to know that the virus was already growing rapidly because the special blood test was taking 10 days to complete. A storm of exaggerated immune response that can cause serious issues may have been triggered by this.

Bennett was breathing hard and warm on the 43rd day of the experiment. Something happened to him. He lost his attention and wouldn't talk to us.

Bennett was given a drug called cidofovir in order to keep his immune system under control. Bennett had signs of recovery after 24 hours, but his condition deteriorated again.

He went into severe and unreversing heart failure after developing a capillary leak in response to his inflammatory explosion.