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The National Institutes of Health
awarded $16 million that would allow Albert Einstein College of Medicine of
Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center researchers to continue work
on the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), established in 1993. WIHS is a
“multi-center, prospective, observational study” of HIV-infected women and
women at high risk for HIV infection.
Chief aims of WIHS research include
identifying natural immune factors in the female genital tract that protect
against HIV, learning how HIV transfers from person to person on the cellular
level, and discovering factors that predict successful HIV treatment. Another
goal of WIHS research is to explore whether epigenetic changes that took place
in the HIV provirus could present an opportunity to cure the virus.
According to Principal Investigator
Dr. Kathy Anastos, understanding the long-term effects of HIV infection and
treatment and identifying factors that predict a good response to treatment are
essential since antiretroviral therapies had transformed HIV into a chronic
condition for millions of HIV-infected people around the world. Anastos’s team
recruited 800 of the 3,800 WIHS study participants and assembled a
biorepository of more than 400,000 samples from participants. Some WIHS
participants have seen Anastos for checkups every six months for 19 years.
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!
