PHILADELPHIA — Twenty patients at Penn Medicine have been cured of the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) following lifesaving kidney transplants from deceased donors who were infected with the disease, according to a study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The researchers also report that the kidney transplants for these 20 patients are functioning just as well as kidneys that are transplanted from similar donors without HCV.
In 2016, Penn Medicine launched an innovative clinical trial to test the effect of transplanting kidneys from donors with HCV into patients currently on the kidney transplant waitlist who do not have the virus, and who would opt in to receive these otherwise unused organs. Recipients were then treated with an antiviral therapy in an effort to cure the virus after transplantation.
A research team co-led by Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, an associate professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, and David S. Goldberg, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, report full data from the trial which includes 12-month HCV treatment outcomes in 10 patients and six month outcomes in another 10 patients—all of whom have received a lifesaving kidney transplant, who have been cured of their contracted HCV, and who have reported good quality of life following their transplants. More, the finding that these 20 kidney transplant recipients have kidney function that is similar to recipients of kidney transplants from donors without HCV suggests that the HCV infection did not harm the quality of the transplant.
“This study, and the results, are good news for those in need of a transplant, particularly those patients who were facing tremendous wait times – often five, seven, even 10 years – and who were spending so much of their daily lives on dialysis,” said Reese. “While larger, longer term studies are important to confirm these results, we can confidently say that hospitals nation-wide could perform hundreds or thousands more transplants if we increased our acceptance of organs from donors with hepatitis C.”
In addition to studying the safety and efficacy of this method in kidney transplantation, the team replicated this same approach for those awaiting a heart transplant in a study which launched in 2017. “We hope to see this same kind of success with our heart transplant recipients, many of whom are already showing no signs of HCV in their blood after transplantation and treatment,” said Goldberg.
Read more about the launch of this trial, and about the early results which were presented at the 2017 American Transplant Congress in Chicago, and were simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.