People with HIV who need a kidney or liver transplant will be able to receive the organ from an HIV-infected donor under new rules announced Tuesday by U.S. health officials.
Previously, such transplants could only be performed as part of a research study. The new rules, which go into effect on Wednesday, are expected to reduce wait times for organs for everyone, regardless of their HIV status, by increasing the pool of available organs.
“This rule removes unnecessary barriers to kidney and liver transplants, expands the pool of organ donors, and improves outcomes for transplant recipients infected with HIV,” said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement. mentioned in.
The safety of this practice is supported by research, including one published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study followed 198 organ recipients for up to four years and compared those who received kidneys from donors who were HIV-positive with those who received kidneys from donors who did not have HIV. Both groups had similarly high overall survival and low organ rejection rates.
In 2010, South African surgeons provided the first evidence that the use of HIV-positive donor organs in people infected with HIV is safe. However, the practice was not allowed in the United States until 2013, when the government lifted the ban and allowed research.
Initially, studies were conducted on deceased donors. And in 2019, a team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore performed the world’s first kidney transplant from an HIV-infected living donor to an HIV-positive recipient.
In the United States, 500 kidney and liver transplants from HIV-positive donors have been performed.
