Surgeons to use HCV infected kidneys for transplant

Editor's Note

Surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University hospitals will transplant kidneys from donors with hepatitis C virus (HCV) as part of a clinical trial this spring, STAT news reports.

The recipients will be given a 12-week course of antiviral therapy after the transplant in hopes of becoming infection-free.

If successful, this could enable hundreds of transplants each year for patients who might otherwise die waiting for a kidney.

Transplant surgeons at two US hospitals are about to do something long considered taboo: put kidneys from donors with hepatitis C into recipients without the infection.