Nuts!

More grist for the legal mill:

In a case that has puzzled immunologists, a man who received a liver transplant from a teenager who died of anaphylactic shock went on to develop a life-threatening nut allergy himself.

The 60-year-old man, who had no history of nut allergy, suffered an anaphylactic reaction to a cashew nut just 25 days after he received the liver transplant. The 15-year-old boy did have the allergy and had died after eating a peanut.

The man later suffered a second anaphylactic reaction after inadvertently eating food containing peanuts. Skin prick tests revealed that the man had developed sensitivity for peanuts, cashew nuts and sesame seeds. The doctors in Sydney, Australia, then found that the liver donor had had allergen-inducing antibodies, known as IgE, to the same three allergens.

However, when the doctors traced other people who received organ donations from the same teenager, they found no other cases where nut allergies had developed.