Story highlights The patients developed breast cancer years after their transplants

The researchers stressed that this is an "extremely rare" case

(CNN) Four European patients developed breast cancer after receiving organs from the same donor, a case report explains.

The patients developed breast cancer years after their transplants, with three of them dying of the disease.

Dr. Frederike Bemelman, professor of nephrology at the University of Amsterdam and author of the report, stressed that this is an "extremely rare" case, the first she has encountered in 20 years in the field of transplantation immunology. "There is always a small risk" of something going wrong during a medical procedure, she said. "Even if you undergo a simple gallbladder procedure, you also have a small chance of something happening to you during the procedure."

The 53-year-old donor had no known medical conditions, and the malignancy was unknown when her kidneys, lungs, liver and heart were harvested.

Three of the organ recipients died after the cancer metastasized, or spread from their place of origin to new areas in the body.

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