HIV milestone

Woman living with AIDS virus donates kidney to HIV-positive stranger

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Surgeons in Baltimore have performed what’s thought to be the world’s first kidney transplant from a living donor with HIV, a milestone for people with the AIDS virus – and one that could free up space on the transplant waiting list for everyone.

Nina Martinez of Atlanta traveled to Johns Hopkins University to donate a kidney to an HIV-positive stranger, saying she “wanted to make a difference in somebody else’s life” and counter the stigma that too often still surrounds HIV infection.

Many people think “somebody with HIV is supposed to look sick,” Martinez, 35, told The Associated Press before the operation. “It’s a powerful statement to show somebody like myself who’s healthy enough to be a living organ donor.”

At a news conference Thursday, Martinez said she was “feeling good” and hopes she’s opened doors for other would-be donors.

“To be able to leave this kind of medical legacy for me was quite important,” she said.

“Here’s a disease that in the past was a death sentence and now has been so well controlled that it offers people with that disease an opportunity to save somebody else,” said Dr. Dorry Segev, a Hopkins surgeon who pushed for the HIV Organ Policy Equity, or HOPE, Act that lifted a 25-year U.S. ban on transplants between people with HIV.

There’s no count of how many HIV-positive patients are among the 113,000 people on the nation’s waiting list for an organ transplant. HIV-positive patients can receive transplants from HIV-negative donors just like anyone else.

Only in the last few years have doctors begun transplanting organs from deceased donors with HIV into patients who also have the virus, organs that once would have been thrown away.

Since 2016, 116 such kidney and liver transplants have been performed in the U.S. as part of a research study, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which oversees the transplant system.

Hopkins’ Segev said Monday’s kidney transplant was a world first.

Doctors had hesitated to allow people still living with HIV to donate because of concern that their remaining kidney would be at risk of damage from the virus or older medications used to treat it.