People with HIV in the U.S.A. can now receive organ transplants, thanks to a new HHS rule

The U.S.A. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Tuesday that individuals living with HIV are now eligible to receive kidney and liver transplants from other HIV-positive donors, ‘LGBTQ Nation’ reports.

Previously, such transplants were restricted to participants in research studies. This new regulation, effective immediately, was informed by a recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study revealed that kidney transplants between HIV-positive individuals had “similar high rates of overall survival and low rates of organ rejection” compared to those among HIV-negative individuals, according to the Associated Press.

“This rule removes unnecessary barriers to kidney and liver transplants, expanding the organ donor pool and improving outcomes for transplant recipients with HIV,” stated HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.

Christine Durand, a professor of medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, emphasised, “This study really shows without a doubt that there’s no differences between receiving a kidney from a donor with HIV versus without HIV... In some ways, it was a boring study, but it really emphasized the safety of this: There were no significant differences.”

In 2013, the U.S.A. lifted a 25-year ban on organ transplants involving HIV-positive individuals with the enactment of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act. Nonetheless, the legislation initially limited such transplants to research settings under conditions that were too stringent for most organ donation centres to meet.

In 2019, a surgical team at Johns Hopkins University completed the world’s first kidney transplant between HIV-positive individuals. Durand anticipates that heart and lung transplants may soon follow.

This new HHS regulation follows two recent health policy changes. In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its restrictions on blood donations from gay and bisexual men. Additionally, last spring, a leading U.S.A. paediatricians’ organisation announced that mothers with HIV can breastfeed if they are taking certain medications, as reported by The Washington Post.