In studies, according to Science News, patients who received kidneys from donors who had been infected with hepatitis C did not subsequently become ill with the virus. This was the result of new treatment with a new generation of drugs that can cure the hepatitis.
The findings are based on a small experiment involving ten patients who had not previously been infected with hepatitis C. The patients were administered with antiviral medications, prior to and following the kidney transplants.
According to lead scientist Jay Fishman, who is employed at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston: “If this increases access to transplantation, then this is a great benefit.” This is in the context of 100,000 people in the U.S. alone who are awaiting kidney transplants. In a typical year, 17,000 kidney transplants are performed. However, around 4,800 people died while waiting for a transplant – with the main reason for waiting being the unavailability of organs.
Currently organs from donors with hepatitis C can only be offered to recipients already infected with the disease. This is due to the risk of viral transmission to those unaffected by the disease.
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, where the virus primarily affects the liver. During the initial infection people generally experience mild or no symptoms. Over many years, however, infection tends to lead to liver disease and sometimes cirrhosis, which can lead to liver failure or liver cancer.
The new research is based on the use of more effective drugs – direct-acting antivirals – which eliminate the virus. Given that, in the U.S., 4,144 kidneys from infected donors were discarded from 2005 to 2014, the pool of available organs should be set to be increased. Further studies, and a safety review, are required.
The research has been reported to the Annals of Internal Medicine. The research paper is titled “Direct-acting antiviral prophylaxis in kidney transplantation from Hepatitis C virus-infected donors to noninfected recipients: an open-label nonrandomized trial.”
