Grant: Fellowship - Priority Announcement - HIV/AIDS and/or STBBI

Globally, 4 out of 5 people live with a virus called cytomegalovirus (CMV) which is transmitted through body fluids such as saliva and stays hidden in the body for life. CMV sometimes wakes up (or "reactivates") briefly before going back into hiding. In resource-rich countries like Canada, CMV may never cause sickness, so most people don't even know they acquired it, on average by the time they're 28. However, elderly people with CMV have much weaker immune systems compared to people who do not have the virus and scientists think that CMV makes people age faster without feeling it. Things are different in resource-poor settings like Africa, where almost all children acquire CMV before they turn 1 year old. A newborn's immune system is not fully developed yet, so CMV could make these infants sick and greatly damage their immune system, making them age faster later in life. I will study 80 children from Zimbabwe who acquired CMV as infants, half of them also born with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In these children who are now 8-16 years old and have regular study visits, I will measure how much CMV is present in their blood, and how often the virus reactivates. I will put their blood samples in instruments that can tell how damaged their immune systems are and relate that to the number of times CMV has reactivated. I predict that the more often CMV reactivates, the more damage it causes to the immune system. I will also compare children who have both CMV and HIV, to see how the two viruses work together to further weaken the immune system. My research will help guide care for children in Africa who have CMV but will also help Canadians. It is impractical to do this research in Canada because CMV is acquired later in life and does not cause as much damage. By studying Zimbabwean children, we can learn how CMV affects the immune system, and use this knowledge to help elderly people and persons living with HIV who are more severely impacted by CMV.