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The National Institutes of Health
(NIH) has awarded a five-year grant of $11.9 million to researchers at Emory
University to study the HIV epidemic among women as part of a recent expansion
of the Women's Interagency HIV Cohort Study (WIHS).
The NIH established the WIHS in 1993
at six sites primarily in the Midwest, West Coast, and East Coast to study
women who are either HIV-infected or at risk for infection. The award to Emory,
creating one of four new clinical research sites for the first time in the
South, opens new opportunities to advance women's health research in HIV/AIDS
in Atlanta and Georgia.
The focus of the Emory WIHS research
will be HIV/AIDS secondary prevention for women through immunological,
clinical/translational, pharmacological, epidemiological and behavioral
research and clinical interventions.
Co-principal investigators of the
grant at Emory are Igho Ofotokun, associate professor of medicine (infectious
diseases) at Emory University School of Medicine, a staff physician at Grady
Health System and a clinician scientist with the Emory Center for AIDS Research
(CFAR), and Gina M. Wingood, Agnes Moore professor of behavioral sciences and
health education at Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Wingood is co-director
of the Prevention Science Core for the Emory CFAR.
"Due to the size of its HIV
epidemic relative to other parts of the South, Atlanta and rural Georgia will
serve as an ideal location to engage HIV-infected and at-risk women into the
WIHS," says Ofotokun. "Emory is at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research,
spearheading cutting-edge work in various aspects of the epidemic. Inclusion of
Emory in the WIHS will broaden the WIHS' scientific agenda to include areas in
which Emory researchers are recognized leaders nationally and
internationally."
Emory has proven expertise and
experience in engaging and working with at-risk and HIV-infected women, and for
many years has been a site for other NIH supported networks, including the HIV
Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), and AIDS
Clinical Trials Group Network (ACTG), and it has state-of-the-art
clinical/translational, basic and behavioral research capacity in women's
health and HIV-infection.
Clinical care at Emory and
affiliated facilities includes nearly 8,000 HIV-infected patients. Through
long-standing collaborations among Emory investigators, county health
departments, and community-based organizations, the WIHS at Emory will have
access to a large pool of potential research participants representative of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic among women in underserved communities in Atlanta and rural
Georgia.
More than 56,000 people become
infected with HIV each year in the U.S., with 600,000 U.S. deaths from AIDS
over the course of the epidemic. The U.S. epidemic has evolved over time to
become a more generalized heterosexual epidemic, with rising rates of infection
among women, particularly minorities. HIV is now the third leading cause of
death for African-American men and women ages 35-44, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2007 the CDC reported that 40-50
percent of people with AIDS in the U.S. lived in the South.
"Understanding the demographics
of the HIV epidemic and formulating prevention and treatment goals in specific
areas of the country is critical to improving outcomes and controlling this
infection," says Wingood. "Our new Emory WIHS site will expand this
important NIH-sponsored research and optimize prevention and treatment in our
severely impacted area of the country."
The WIHS is primarily funded by the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the NIH, with
co-funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development (NICHD), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Institute on Drug
Abuse (NIDA).
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus.
To learn more about The Friends of
AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
