By AP/St. Louis Public Radio
ST. LOUIS – Federal health officials say a Missouri blood donor is linked to the nation's first known case of HIV transmission through a blood transfusion in eight years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that the unidentified donor's blood products in 2008 infected a Colorado kidney-transplant patient with the virus that causes AIDS.
The questioned donor's blood products also was given to an Arkansas patient who died of heart disease two days after getting a transfusion during a mid-2008 surgery. But the CDC says it's unknown if that patient contracted HIV.
The CDC says that getting the virus from blood transfusions remains exceedingly rare, estimating the risk of it happening to be about 1 in 1.5 million.
The agency described the donor only as being in his 40s and someone who concealed from those collecting the donated blood the fact that he had had anonymous sex with men and women while married.