WASHINGTON, D.C. - There has been a dramatic shift in how doctors use donated kidneys infected with hepatitis C that used to be thrown away. Hepatitis C is a viral infection that causes liver inflammation, sometimes leading to serious damage. Patients who received infected kidneys had nearly the same function as those who received uninfected kidneys, the study said. Until a few years ago, there weren't really good options to treat hepatitis C. Now, there are drugs with high cure rates, Potluri said. But nearly 40% of the hepatitis C-infected kidneys donated between January 2018 and March 2019 were discarded.