| ■ Doctors Perform HIV-Infected Donor/Recipient Kidney Tranplants | 2010.06.18 |
| In a medical first, South African doctors transplanted kidneys between donors and patients who were both infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The first four transplants took place in 2008 at a Cape Town hospital called Groote Schuur and are described in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. Five more transplants have been performed since, the Associated Press reported. Some American doctors wonder whether the same type of transplants could be tried in the United States, which bans organ donations from HIV-infected people. We've been talking a lot about whether it makes sense to start doing this," Dr. Peter Stock, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, told the AP. He noted that U.S. doctors transplant organs between donors and patients with hepatitis C. |