A new U.S. health rule, effective Wednesday, allows kidney and liver transplants from HIV-positive donors to recipients with HIV.
Previously, such transplants were restricted to research settings. This change is anticipated to reduce wait times for all transplant candidates by expanding the organ supply.
“This rule eliminates unnecessary obstacles to kidney and liver transplants, increasing the organ donor pool and improving outcomes for HIV-positive transplant recipients,” stated U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The safety of this procedure is supported by research, including a recent New England Journal of Medicine study. This study tracked 198 organ recipients for up to four years, comparing outcomes between those receiving organs from HIV-positive and HIV-negative donors. Both groups showed similarly high survival rates and low organ rejection rates.
South African surgeons first demonstrated the safety of using HIV-positive donor organs in HIV-positive recipients in 2010. The U.S. initially prohibited the practice, lifting the ban in 2013 to permit research studies.
Initially, studies focused on deceased donors. In 2019, a team at Johns Hopkins University performed the world’s first living-donor transplant to an HIV-positive recipient.
A total of 500 kidney and liver transplants from HIV-positive donors have been performed in the U.S.
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