Grant: Team Grant - HIV/AIDS and comorbidities

Now that HIV+ people are treated with combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) and live longer, it is becoming clear that they seem to experience diseases and conditions associated with aging at an earlier age, and at greater frequency. Similarly, treatment of HIV-infected pregnant women with these same medications is very successful at preventing infection of the infants with HIV. However, it is becoming apparent that the children who were exposed to fairly toxic drugs in the womb are not as healthy as children born to uninfected mothers. In both cases, it is not totally clear if it is exposure to the virus itself or to the inflammatory state created by viral infections, or to adverse effects of the drugs themselves, or a combination of these factors. Our research will work toward identifying the risk factors associated with various health problems in HIV+ women, from hormonal and reproductive abnormalities to increased bone fractures. We will study preterm births, developmental deficiencies and autism in HIV-exposed uninfected children who were exposed to cART during their fetal development. Finally, we will investigate body fat redistribution and lipid abnormalities in HIV+ children treated with cART. In all these study populations, we will also investigated how markers of aging and markers of inflammation are affected, how they change over time and relate these measures to the diseases and conditions.