NIH awards $ 23 million grant to study diseases affecting HIV-positive people

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $ 23-million, seven-year grant to researchers at Albert Einstein Medical Schools and the Montefiore Health System to study HIV and chronic diseases that often accompany HIV infection, including cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases and diabetes. and cancer.

The new grant builds on scientific and clinical research conducted as part of the WIHS (Women's Interagency HIV Study), a 26-year multicenter study, a multicenter study of women living with or exposed to HIV. risk of HIV infection. The NIH merged the WIHS study with a comparable parallel study of men, known as the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, or MACS, which began in 1984. Together, these studies have recruited thousands of participants and to generate more than 2,300 publications on HIV-related topics.

The new study, called the MACS / WIHS Combined Cohort Study, will continue to use information provided by participants in previous studies and will recruit 2,500 additional men and women, including people without HIV. It will also focus on the chronic diseases that now affect people living with HIV, rather than on HIV infection itself.

New research objectives

This change in focus increases the scope of our research into the leading causes of illness and death among people living with HIV. People are living longer with HIV because of the miraculous success of antiretroviral therapy. As a result, the immune complications of HIV rarely kill, but rather the advance of these other diseases, which often occur much earlier than expected in people living with HIV. "

Co-Principal Investigator Kathryn Anastos, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Population Health, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women's Health at Einstein and General Internist at Montefiore

Dr. Anastos has directed since 1993 the scientific and clinical research of the site WIHS of Einstein and Montefiore Bronx, one of the nine of the country. Anjali Sharma, MD, MS, co-principal investigator, badociate professor of medicine at Einstein, and internist and infectious disease physician at Montefiore, joined the Bronx WIHS in 2013.

"We have been among the leading researchers in several specific areas, including cardiovascular disease, human papillomavirus (HPV), immunology of the female bad tract and emerging studies on the microbiome," said the Dr. Anastos, Co-Director Emeritus of Einstein Global Health Center and Director of the Center for Clinical Research, Translation and Implementation of the Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY AIDS Research Center.

Monitoring aging and social impacts on health

The new study will allow researchers to study the impact of age, race, ethnicity, and health inequality on HIV-related comorbidities and the progression of HIV infection. The Bronx site will have between 150 and 200 participants.

"The registration of men and women will help us understand how HIV and chronic diseases affect men and women differently, especially as people get older," said Dr. Sharma. "This knowledge can inform our understanding of gender differences in health and illness throughout life, well beyond HIV."

The participants in the study will undergo comprehensive annual examinations and tests. Researchers will also study disease-related outcomes, such as heart attacks and strokes, perform neuropsychiatric tests to badess cognition, and administer detailed psychiatric badessments.