In a first, a living HIV-positive donor's organ was transplanted to a person carrying the virus
By Lenny Bernstein Lenny Bernstein Reporter covering health and medicine Email Bio Follow March 28 at 9:00 AM Surgeons at the Johns Hopkins Hospital have transplanted a kidney from a living HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient, a medical breakthrough they hope will expand the pool of available organs and help change perceptions of HIV.
“Society perceives me and people like me as people who bring death,” Martinez said in an interview Saturday before the operation. “And I can’t figure out any better way to show that people like me can bring life.” Nina Martinez is the first HIV-positive live kidney donor. More than 113,000 people are on the U.S. waiting list for organ transplants, most of them seeking kidneys. Others are too sick to be listed or are taken off the list when their disease progresses too far.
“People with HIV today can’t donate blood. But now they’re able to donate a kidney,” said Dorry Segev, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the research team and removed Martinez’s left kidney. “They have a disease that 30 years ago was a death sentence. Today they’re so healthy they can give someone else life.”
Martinez and the recipient will remain on antiretroviral medication indefinitely to control their HIV. Resistance to HIV medication can vary from person to person, so doctors must monitor the recipient closely in the months after the donor organ is introduced. The recipient will also take drugs to prevent organ rejection, and those are not expected to significantly interfere with the HIV-suppressing medications.
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