American doctors have found that when transplanting HIV-infected organs, two viruses – a donor and a recipient – can coexist in the body.
According to ToDay News Ufa, a research team led by Mary Klotman of Duke University investigated a 61-year-old HIV-positive patient suffering from polycystic kidney disease who underwent an emergency transplant. After a course of antiretroviral therapy, that is, suppression of the multiplication of the virus, there were practically no intrinsic virus particles in its blood (less than 20 per milliliter). The patient received a kidney transplant from an HIV-positive donor, whose blood revealed about 183 thousand per milliliter copies of the virus. In a patient whose history was described by researchers, both variants of the virus were present in the analyzes one week after transplantation, despite antiretroviral therapy
The organ did not cause acute rejection, but doctors were primarily interested in the interaction between the viruses. They isolated HIV samples from the transplanted kidney, as well as from the urine and blood plasma of the recipient in the first few days after transplantation. Researchers found that in several hours with urine both HIV variants were released simultaneously – both the patient’s own virus and the resulting strain from the donor.
Scientists did not find any signs of interaction with the conversion into super-viral particles in viruses, however, both strains of the virus infected the same type of cells, since they were isolated from the cells of the renal epithelium in the urine. Fortunately for the patient and doctors, both strains showed good sensitivity to antiretroviral therapy, and after 9 days the donor virus disappeared from the analyzes, and the recipient’s own virus remained.
Thus, scientists have proved the possibility of coexistence of viruses in one organism, even despite the conduct of antiretroviral therapy. And despite the fact that the transplanted kidney was not rejected, and the donor strain disappeared from urine and blood tests, the authors of the work insist on conducting long-term monitoring of such patients. Further, they plan to study how HIV infection affects rejection and survival of a transplanted organ and whether a donor kidney can serve as a place where the virus remains hidden for a long time.
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