Persons infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), patients in need of a kidney transplant might safely receive an organ from an HCV-infected donor, a new study maintains. Using hepatitis C-infected kidneys for this group of patients would cut costs and waiting times, thereby saving lives, said researchers and director of general internal medicine at the University of Cincinnati. "Increasing the supply decreases the time patients on dialysis wait for a transplant," said the researcher. The key is to treat the disease after transplantation, he said and curing hepatitis C, a serious liver disease, is easier and less toxic than it was only a few years ago.
New drugs have few side effects and cure rates are nearly 100 percent, he added. Because of overdose deaths related to the U.S. opioid epidemic, more donor kidneys are potentially available, the researchers pointed out. But kidneys of…
