Pig heart used in pioneering human transplant had virus: report

The genetically modified pig whose heart was used in the first human transplant of its kind had a porcine virus that may have played the role in the death of the patient two months later, experts said.

David Bennett Sr., 57, first seemed to be doing well the first few weeks after he received the history-making heart transplant on January 7 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, but his condition suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse, the MIT Technology Review reported Wednesday.

“He looked really funky,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, Bennett’s transplant surgeon, said during an American Society of Transplantation webinar.

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