A Johns Hopkins study discovered HIV-positive kidney transplant recipients can have the same one year survival rates as those without HIV, provided certain risk factors for transplant failure are recognized and aggressively managed.
 
The study found HIV-positive transplant recipients had an 87.9 percent one year survival rate compared to 94.6 percent of transplant recipients without HIV. Although HIV-positive recipients took longer to gain full function of the transplanted kidney, they had equal kidney and patient survival compared to HIV-negative recipients.
 
Traditionally, HIV patients were not considered transplant candidates because survival rates after transplantation were thought to be greatly compromised by the disease, which cripples the body's immune system. Transplant patients also take drugs that suppress their immune systems in order to prevent organ rejection, a regimen thought to further threaten their already fragile immune systems.

This article originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Kidney Transplant Today.