HIV-positive person donates kidney to fellow HIV-positive patient; doc calls it ‘huge’

Washington, March 31: In what constitutes a great tale of humanism, a person with HIV has donated a kidney to a transplant recipient who is also living with the same deadly ailment. This is the first time in the world that such an incident happened and it was described as something "huge".

According to a report in Good News Network, the HIV-to-HIV kidney transplantation was carried out by a team from John Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, earlier this week and the doctors said both were doing fine.

"This is the first time someone living with HIV has been allowed to donate a kidney, ever, in the world, and that's huge," Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was quoted as saying. "A disease that was a death sentence in the 1980s has become one so well-controlled that those living with HIV can now save lives with kidney donation-that's incredible."

It was against the general belief that people with HIV could donor kidneys but recent research on over 40,000 people affected with HIV showed that the new antiretroviral drugs are safe for kidney and those who have HIV under control have same risk as those without it and are considered healthy enough to donate the organs.

Segev and Christine Durand, an associate professor of medicine and oncology at the university, are in charge of HOPE in Action, an initiative that includes multiple national studies exploring the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of HIV-to-HIV transplantation.