Grant: Team Grant - HIV/AIDS Comorbidities Prevention and Healthy Living

Scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding and treating HIV infection over the past 20 years. Even with antiretroviral therapy, HIV-1 is still able to infect and damage the nervous system. This continues to be a major problem for people who are living with HIV/AIDS. The main problems when HIV-1 infects a person's nervous system are difficulties in thinking and persistent pain from damaged nerves. These problems are part of a condition called NeuroHIV. They diminish a person's quality of life, impair their sleep, reduce their ability to hold a job, affect their mood and isolate them socially. Over the past 5 years, our team has defined how often these problems occur and their severity. We have also discovered new disease processes and used that knowledge to develop and test new approaches to diagnose and treat NeuroHIV. For example, we uncovered new biological markers for people who have cognitive problems and pain from NeuroHIV. We found new possible treatments for these cognitive problems and pain, and we are testing those treatments in clinical trials. We have also identified specific sex and gender factors that make some people with NeuroHIV more vulnerable to thinking problems and pain from damaged nerves. NeuroHIV causes other problems that need research. These problems are linked to sex and gender diversity, and to how aging affects people with NeuroHIV. Our team of researchers from different areas of science and health will map basic pathways in the biology of NeuroHIV. Discovering these pathways can help us to analyze symptoms and risk factors for NeuroHIV. Understanding the pathways will also lead to new ways to diagnose and treat NeuroHIV. Part of our work will be to build broader community knowledge of NeuroHIV and its related problems.