HIV-positive kidney transplants possible

BALTIMORE, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- HIV-positive kidney transplant recipients can have the same one-year survival rates as those without HIV if risk factors are managed, U.S. researchers said.

Dr. Jayme Locke of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore said that traditionally, HIV patients were not considered transplant candidates because survival rates after transplantation were thought to be greatly compromised by the disease, which cripples the body's immune system.

Transplant patients also take drugs that suppress their immune systems in order to prevent organ rejection, a regimen thought to further threaten their already fragile immune systems.

However, Locke said the study results are in part a reflection of newer anti-retroviral therapies that have reduced HIV death rates by 80 percent. Kidney disease, for example, accounts for more than 10 percent of HIV-related deaths.

Locke and her team looked at the one-year kidney survival rates and one-year patient survival rates of 36,492 HIV-negative and 100 HIV-positive kidney transplant recipients listed on the United Organ Sharing Network list.

The study, published in the Archives of Surgery, found the chances of survival were the same in both groups.