Every year in the United States, more than 22,000 people receive organ transplants — kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, and pancreases from deceased donors. The organ matching and screening process is among the most rigorously regulated procedures in American medicine. Donors are tested for HIV, hepatitis B and C, CMV, EBV, syphilis, HTLV, and other pathogens before their organs are cleared for transplantation. One virus is conspicuously absent from that list: Kaposi Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus (KSHV), also known as Human Herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8).
And according to a landmark CDC MMWR investigation published March 5, 2026, that screening gap is producing a growing patient safety crisis. Between January 2021 and September 2025, 46 cases of suspected donor-derived KSHV infection were identified among solid organ transplant recipients in the United States — approximately five times the rate documented during 2016–2020, when only 9 cases were reported in a comparable period. In the entire period from 2010 to 2025, 57 cases have been reported — meaning the majority of all cases ever documented in the United States occurred in just the past four years.
