CORE Center Researchers Present Findings at Conference

Several CORE Center researchers presented their study findings in Boston at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection (CROI), March 3-6, 2014. CROI brings together top basic, translational, and clinical researchers from around the world to share the latest studies.

Research involving patients co-infected with hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV was the topic of two poster presentations. Dr. Oluwatoyin Adeyemi and her CORE Center hepatitis team studied the evaluation and treatment of the HCV/HIV co-infected patients in their clinic and reported their findings in the poster “Hepatitis C (HCV) Evaluation and Treatment in HIV Patients: The CORE HCV Cascade”. Dr. Audrey French reported the findings of her nested study of HIV/HCV infected women participating in the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) in the poster, “Isolated Hepatitis B Core Antibody Status is not Associated with Accelerated Liver Disease Progression in HIV/Hepatitis C (HCV) Co-infected Women.

Phylogenetics is the study of relationships among groups discovered through molecular sequencing data and other markers. Drs. Ronald Lubelchek and Sarah Hoehnen reported on their HIV research using molecular phylogenetics in their poster “Transmission Clustering Among Newly Diagnosed HIV+ Patients in Chicago, 2008 to 2011”.

There were two presentations from CORE researchers related to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a prevention method where individuals that do not have HIV take HIV medication to reduce their risk of becoming infected. Dr. Sybil Hosek presented a poster, “PrEP Interest, Uptake, and Adherence among Young Men who Have Sex with Men (YMSM) in the United States”. Chris Balthazar and London Dorris were participants in the Use It or Lose It Symposium, where they discussed PrEP from the community perspective and described efforts of the CORE Center/Stroger research team to engage young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in PrEP trials. More information on this and other PrEP related CROI presentations can be found on the government blog.