A 60-year-old Australian man received a liver transplant from a 15-year-old boy who died of anaphylactic shock after eating a peanut. Now the organ recipient has also developed a life-threatening allergy to nuts. Despite having no history of nut allergy, he had a dangerous reaction to a cashew nut 25 days after receiving the transplant. None of the other people who received donated organs from the same teenager developed nut allergies.
Immunologist Tri Giang Phan says there has only been one recorded case of a nut allergy being transferred by organ transplantation before, in France in 1997, when a patient received both a liver and a kidney from the same donor.
People have even reported taking on the beliefs and emotions of their organ donors. Almost anything is possible when you learn to look at life in a brand new way.
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