PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -Three people have died after receiving organ transplants that were infected with a rodent virus, the state Health Department said Monday.

Two people from Massachusetts and one from Rhode Island received transplants April 10 and April 11 and died a few weeks later of the viral infection LCMV, which is associated with exposure to rodent waste, according to the Department of Health.

David Gifford, state director of health, said it’s only the second time known that LCMV has been transmitted through an organ transplant. The germ isn’t normally tested for in organ transplant recipients, health officials said.

The dead are a liver transplant recipient and a double-lung recipient from Massachusetts and a kidney transplant recipient from Rhode Island.

Another Rhode Island patient who received a kidney from the same female donor is believed to be recovering, said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Two other people received corneas from the same donor in operations outside the United States. CDC officials said they are investigating where those corneas went.

The source of the infection was traced back to a donor from Rhode Island, who died of unrelated causes, Gifford said. A hamster at the donor’s residence tested positive for LCMV, and is considered the source of the infection.

The CDC sent disease detectives to Massachusetts and Rhode Island last week and is conducting tests on the dead hamster to see if the virus can be confirmed as the cause.

“We believe the hamster was the source but we can’t rule out a common house mouse,” Daigle said.

Only one previous instance of LCMV causing a transplant-related death has been reported, in Wisconsin in December 2003, but it wasn’t definitively linked to rodent exposure, said Dr. Matthew Kuehnert of the CDC.

“It’s very common in wild mice,” but human cases are rare, Kuehnert said. People with suppressed immune systems, such as transplant patients, are especially vulnerable.

Health officials discovered the connection after a doctor at Rhode Island Hospital, where the Rhode Island transplant was performed, reported an unusual viral death, Gifford said. From there, health officials traced the death back to the organ donor.

The Petsmart in Warwick, where the donor had bought the hamster, has removed mice and hamsters from sale, and given import and sales records to the Department of Environmental Management, Gifford said.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation, and we’re working very closely with the Health Department and the CDC to do whatever we can to help them with their investigation,” said Jennifer Pflugfelder, spokeswoman for Petsmart, Inc.

LCMV is found in house mice, hamsters, and other rodents. It usually only produces flu-like symptoms in humans. In this case, however, the victims were transplant recipients, who were taking very large doses of immunosuppresant medication as part of their treatment, which allowed the virus to grow and multiply, Gifford said.

Gifford would not identify the victims or the donor, and would not say how old they were, saying that information was confidential.

Pflugfelder said Petsmart learned of the infection last week. The Centers for Disease Control took away about 60 hamsters, mice and rats last week, and the remaining animals were taken Monday morning, she said. She didn’t know how many total were removed.

It is the first time a Petsmart store has seen the virus in rodents, she said. The company, based in Phoenix, has more than 740 stories in the United States and Canada. The Warwick store is wholly owned by the company, Pflugfelder said.

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Associated Press Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report.

AP-ES-05-23-05 1818EDT