People with HIV can successfully receive transplanted kidneys from HIV-positive donors, MedPage Today reports. Publishing their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers conducted a prospective, nonrandomized study of 27 HIV-positive individuals who received kidney transplants from HIV-positive donors between 2008 and 2014.

The study participants had a CD4 count of at least 200 and all had an undetectable viral load thanks to antiretroviral treatment. The donors had all recently died and either had not been treated for HIV or had received only first-line therapy.

The participants who were still living at the end of the trial had been followed for a median 2.4 years. The survival rate of the group was 84 percent one year after transplantation, 84 percent after three years, and 74 percent after five years. The respective corresponding survival rates of their transplants were 93 percent, 84 percent and 84 percent. (If someone died with a functioning transplant, the researchers considered the transplant as having survived.) The rejection rates for the kidneys were 8 percent after one year and 22 percent after three years.  

By comparison, in a 2010 study of transplants of kidneys from HIV-negative donors, the rejection rate after one year was 31 percent.

The participants in the new study maintained control of their HIV.

To read the MedPage Today story, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.