Surgeons execute First HIV-to-HIV Kidney Transplant

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For the first time, a person living with HIV has donated a kidney to a transplant recipient also living with HIV.

A team from Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore performed the surgery March 25.

"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," Dr. Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said Thursday at a news conference.

Organs have been transplanted from an HIV-positive cadaver to an HIV-positive patient; however, HIV is known to cause kidney disease, so people living with HIV have not previously been able to donate kidneys.

Segev said he and his colleagues researched more than 40,000 people living with HIV, looking specifically at kidney health. They found that people whose HIV was under control have the same health risks as those without HIV, and are healthy enough to donate kidneys.

In addition, antiretroviral therapy allows people with HIV to have a normal lifespan.