Liver, kidney from HIV-infected donor are transplanted into HIV-positive patients

In a first that gives HIV-positive patients yet another chance for long lives, surgeons at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center have transplanted a kidney and a liver from a deceased donor who was positive for HIV into two HIV-positive recipients.

The groundbreaking transplant surgeries end a 25-year stretch during which the organs of HIV-positive people willing to donate them were rejected for use in transplants. The procedure follows the 2013 enactment of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, which repealed the ban on using such organs.

“This is an unbelievably exciting day for our hospital and our team, but more importantly for patients living with both HIV and end-stage organ disease,” said Dr. Dorry L. Segev, the Johns Hopkins surgeon who performed the surgeries. “For these individuals, this could mean a new chance at life.”

“What we had done before was take HIV-negative organs and put them into HIV-positive people,” Segev said. “Using an HIV-positive organ adds one degree of complexity, which is now there’s a new strain of HIV being introduced into the recipient. The thing we have to do is just make sure that their HIV regimen gets adapted accordingly.”

Segev played a key role in lobbying Congress to change the long-standing ban on the use of HIV-infected organs in transplantation.

Under the new law, only transplant recipients who are HIV-positive will be eligible to receive organs from HIV-positive donors. Still, the change is expected to make potentially thousands of transplantable organs available each year to HIV-infected people with end-stage diseases of the kidneys, heart, liver or lungs.