A groundbreaking U.S. study has confirmed that people living with HIV can safely receive kidney transplants from donors who also have the virus.
This finding could drastically reduce overall wait times for organs, benefiting patients with and without HIV alike.
Study Details and Results
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study tracked 198 HIV-positive patients who received kidney transplants from both HIV-positive and HIV-negative deceased donors. Researchers followed the participants for up to four years, comparing the outcomes between the two groups.
The results? Both groups showed similar survival rates and low instances of organ rejection.
While some patients experienced brief increases in their HIV levels, primarily due to inconsistent medication use, the virus in all cases dropped back to undetectable levels.
“This demonstrates the safety and the fantastic outcomes that we’re seeing from these transplants,” said Dr. Dorry Segev, one of the study’s co-authors and a leading transplant surgeon at NYU Langone Health.
Allowing HIV-positive kidney transplants marks a shift in U.S. medical practices.
Until 2013, organ donations from HIV-positive individuals were banned in the U.S., even though South Africa had demonstrated the safety of such procedures three years earlier. In 2019, the U.S. performed its first kidney transplant from an HIV-positive living donor.
To date, about 500 kidney and liver transplants from HIV-positive donors have been performed in the U.S., offering a glimpse of the potential impact.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health proposed allowing these transplants for both living and deceased donors, potentially expanding the donor pool even further.
A Win-Win for Everyone
With more than 90,000 people in the U.S. on the kidney transplant waiting list, including 4,000 who died in 2022 while waiting, this breakthrough is promising.
HIV-positive sociology professor and organ donor Carrie Foote stressed the importance of the findings: “Not only can we help those of us living with this disease, but we free up more organs in the entire organ pool so that those who don’t have HIV can get an organ faster.”
Dr. Elmi Muller, a pioneer in HIV-positive organ transplants, hailed the study as a milestone for fairness in healthcare.
“We have taken yet another step toward fairness and equality for persons living with HIV,” she wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.
