Nina Martinez, HIV Positive, Transplants Her Kidney to Positive Recipient

On March 27, 2019, an HIV positive woman from Atlanta, Georgia became the world first living kidney donor when her kidney was transplanted into another individual inflicted with HIV.

A statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore who performed the surgery said in a statement both patients are doing well after the surgery, and the recipient does not want to to be revealed.

The donor,36-year-old Nina Martinez, a public health consultant was infected in 1983 when she was 6-weeks-old. Martinez received prior to when blood banks tested for HIV, a blood transfusion.

At a news conference on March 28, 2019, Dr. Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in the 1980s HIV was considered a sentence of death. Now it is a disease that can be controlled, and individuals who have HIV can now be kidney donors.

The United States did not permit organ donations from those with HIV until 2013. Segev said that he regularly watched people who had the disease die while on the organ transplant list. He said he had to reject any donor living or dead if they had HIV.

Organs have been transplanted from a cadaver which was HIV positive to a patient who was HIV. However, HIV can cause kidney disease, so individuals who were infected with HIV were not permitted to donate a kidney.

Dr. Christine Durand, who was on Martinez’s surgical team, said the transplant of HIV positive organs could advance medicine and help stop the stigma regarding the disease.

Durand said Martinez met all the criteria of a regular donation. She did not have hypertension, was healthy, and did not have diabetes. Her only other potential risk factor for kidney problems was the fact she had the disease. Durand said the team determined that it was a small and acceptable risk.

The recipient and donor must be compatible regarding similar HIV drug resistance. When the recipient of the organ acquires a new strain of the disease the drug regimen that they would take would continue to work.

Durand continued by saying if need be the recipient of the organ can change their medication, and a plan must be in place before the transplant. She also noted that there are over 20 different HIV medications. She continued by saying that combining immunosuppressant drugs and HIV medication, which may lower the possibility of the body rejecting an organ, should not be of issue for the recipient.

There are approximately 113,000 people in the United States on the transplant list. Kidneys have the most extended weight. Daily 20 Americans die before receiving an organ.

Written by Barbara Sobel

Sources:

VOA News: Surgeons Perform First Positive to-Positive Kidney Transplant
CNN: In world first, positive woman donates kidney to HIV-positive recipient
Science News: First ever living donor Positive-to-HIV kidney transplant

Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Scott & White Healthcare – Creative Commons License