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Three patients who received kidney or liver transplants from a single donor developed febrile illnesses with varying degrees of encephalopathy; all died within 6 weeks after transplantation. Despite extensive testing, the causative pathogen could not be identified. Then a multi-institutional group of researchers used a relatively new technique — unbiased high-throughput sequencing — to evaluate RNA from tissue or body fluids of two of the recipients. (Several of the researchers are employed by, or otherwise connected to, the company that developed this method.)
The new diagnostic technique allowed rapid identification of all nucleic acid sequences in the clinical samples assayed. Following additional laboratory procedures, the researchers de…