CLEVELAND - Authorities were testing donated blood to determine whether three people in Ohio, including one who died this week, contracted West Nile virus through blood transfusions.

        “We are checking into three potential cases” involving transfusions, said Bernadette Burden, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, on Friday. “Those have not been confirmed at this point.”

        West Nile virus is typically transmitted by infected mosquitoes, but federal health officials learned last month that it can also apparently spread through blood transfusions and organ transplants, although they consider the risk low.

        According to a CDC report released Thursday, 29 patients nationwide with West Nile virus or related diseases had received transfusions. Of those, four cases indicate a transfusion caused the disease, the report said.

        Transfusion recipient Dorothy Corwin, 74, died Monday at the Cleveland Clinic, The Plain Dealer reported Friday. The clinic refused to release or confirm any information about Ms. Corwin.

        She had been admitted in August and got a transfusion during heart surgery, a family member said. She had also got a transfusion at another hospital.

        The other cases under review are a 60-year-old man who received a transfusion at a Cleveland-area hospital, and a 68-year-old female cancer patient who had a transfusion at Adams County Memorial Hospital in Decatur, Ind., hospital and health officials confirmed.

        Terry Allan, assistant commissioner of the Cuyahoga County Health Department, said he does not think the nation's blood supply is unsafe.

        “The numbers (of cases) we are looking at are very low,” Mr. Allan said.

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