SAN ANTONIO ? A Texas ranch hand undergoing surgery was infected with the AIDS virus in what is believed to be the first U.S. case of the virus being transmitted through donated blood since rigorous new HIV-screening technology was implemented three years ago.

A spokeswoman for the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center said only one patient received the tainted blood.

	www.cdc.gov/hiv/ stats.htm

David Autrey, 51, of Chilton was infected with human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, through a blood transfusion he received during emergency heart bypass surgery in August 2000 at Scott & White Hospital in Temple, officials at the San Antonio blood bank said.

“There’s no cure for this stuff, and this (HIV drug) cocktail is no fun,” Autrey told the San Antonio Express-News in Saturday’s editions. “I was looking forward to see all the grandkids grow up, but you know how it goes.”

Spokeswoman Shelley Valdez said the blood bank had located all the tainted blood. Autrey received the red blood cells from the donated blood, but the plasma portion was frozen and never used, she said.

There are no other known cases of HIV being transmitted through donated blood since blood banks added new testing technology, said Dr. Michael Busch, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco and an executive with Blood Centers of the Pacific.

However, while the testing process is highly sophisticated, it is still considered experimental and can fail to detect the virus in blood from donors who gave blood soon after being exposed to HIV, he said.

The tainted blood came from a man who was a regular donor at the San Antonio blood bank and who had donated four times during 2000, Kalmin said.

When the man donated in December 2000, his blood tested positive for HIV.

“The explanation is that the (donor) was recently exposed,” Kalmin said. “It hadn’t had the opportunity to multiply to levels that were detectable” in the automated testing.

Blood banks always have been required by the FDA to test donor blood for 12 infectious agents. They’re also required to do a brief medical history and a physical of the donor.

In 1999, blood banks began nucleic amplification testing, which closes the window period of detecting tainted blood. That testing is not required by the Food and Drug Administration and is still under investigation, Valdez said.

Experts say the chance of getting HIV from donated blood is one in 2 million to 3 million transfusions.