US health officials have announced a new rule allowing people with HIV to receive kidney or liver transplants from donors with HIV to increase the pool of available organs and shorten wait times for all patients.
Previously, such transplants could only be done as part of research studies.
The big picture: Secretary Xavier Becerra stated that the rule removes unnecessary barriers, expands the organ donor pool, and improves outcomes for transplant recipients with HIV.
- Research supporting the safety of this practice was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing similar overall survival rates and low organ rejection rates in recipients of HIV-positive donor organs compared to those receiving organs from donors without HIV.
- South Africa provided the initial evidence in 2010 that using HIV-positive donor organs was safe in people with HIV, but the practice wasn’t allowed in the US until 2013 for research studies.
- In 2019, Johns Hopkins University performed the world’s first kidney transplant from a living donor with HIV to an HIV-positive recipient, following 500 transplants of kidneys and livers from HIV-positive donors in the US.
