MCG researchers secure $5.7M to study HIV complications
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Augusta University is receiving millions of dollars in two National Institutes of Health grants aimed at helping scientists at the Medical College of Georgia understand some complications associated with HIV.
Eric Belin de Chantemèle, a physiologist in the MCG Vascular Biology Center, is the principal investigator on a new $2.7 million grant. It’s meant to understand why people living with HIV experience an earlier-than-normal onset and higher prevalence of hypertension, the leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
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Belin de Chantemèle and Laszlo Kovacs, from the MCG Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, are also principal investigators on another new $3 million grant to study one of the most devastating cardiovascular complications of HIV – pulmonary vascular disease. That problem affects the blood vessels in the lungs.
Thanks to the advent of a combination of drugs that stops HIV from replicating in the body, the life expectancy of people living with HIV has dramatically increased.
In fact, most people living with HIV no longer die from the opportunistic disease but instead from cardiovascular disease.
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The grants could help scientists understand why.
Belin de Chantemèle theorizes a contributing factor is some HIV-derived proteins that remain in circulation despite treatment of the virus.
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