Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have found HIV-positive kidney transplant parents experience superior outcomes when compared to kidney transplant patients with hepatitis C or both viruses.
The team analyzed outcomes of more than 124,000 adult kidney recipients transplanted between 1996 and 2013. They found the three-year survival rate of HIV patients (89 percent) was similar to those of uninfected patients (90 percent) and higher than the survival rates of patients with hepatitis C (84 percent) or co-infected patients (73 percent).
Less than a quarter of the kidney transplant centers in the U.S. offer transplants to HIV patients and HIV patients receive fewer kidney transplants than non-infected groups or hepatitis C patients.
Unlike hepatitis C patients, HIV patients are required to have an undetectable viral load to receive a kidney transplant, a requirement that the study authors suggest may be unfair considering transplant outcomes are better for HIV patients than hepatitis C patients.
"These findings show that HIV patients are being unfairly perceived to have worse kidney transplant outcomes than non-infected groups, and as a result, they often have to wait the longest for transplants and there are fewer living donors," said lead author Deirdre Sawinski, MD.
According to Dr. Sawinski, the research team hopes the study findings result in greater access to transplantation for HIV patients as well as greater focus on eradicating hepatitis C in the kidney transplant community — either pre-transplant or immediately post-transplant — to ensure better outcomes.
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