Impact of utilization of hepatitis C positive organs in liver transplant: Analysis of united network for organ sharing database

BACKGROUND: The utility of hepatitis C virus (HCV) organs has increased after the Food and Drug Administration approval of direct acting anti-viral (DAA) medications for the HCV treatment. The efficacy of DAA in treating HCV is nearly 100%. AIM: To analyze the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) database to compare the survival rates between the hepatitis C positive donors and negative recipients and hepatitis C negative donors and recipients. METHODS: We analyzed the adult patients in UNOS database who underwent deceased donor liver transplant from January 2014 to December 2017. The primary endpoint was to compare the survival rates among the four groups with different hepatitis C donor and recipient status: (Group 1) Both donor and recipient negative for HCV (Group 2) Negative donor and positive recipient for HCV (Group 3) Positive donor and negative recipient for HCV (Group 4) Both positive donor and recipient for HCV. SAS 9.4 software was used for the data analysis. Kaplan Meier log rank test was used to analyze the estimated survival rates among the four groups. RESULTS: A total of 24512 patients were included: Group 1: 16436, Group 2: 6174, Group 3: 253 and Group 4: 1649. The 1-year (Group 1: 91.8%, Group 2: 92.12%, Group 3: 87%, Group 4: 92.8%), 2-year (Group 1: 88.4%, Group 2: 88.1%, Group 3: 84.3%, Group 4: 87.5%), 3-year (Group 1: 84.9%, Group 2: 84.3%, Group 3: 75.9%, Group 4: 83.2%) survival rates showed no statistical significance among the four groups. Kaplan Meier log rank test did not show any statistical significance difference in the estimated survival rates between Group 3 vs all the other groups. CONCLUSION: The survival rates in hepatitis C positive donors and negative recipients are similar as compared to both hepatitis C negative donors and recipients. This could be due to the use of DAA therapy with cure rates of nearly 100%. This study supports the use of hepatitis C positive organs in the selected group of recipients with and without HCV infection. Further long-term studies are needed to further validate these findings.