Clinical Studies

YRGCARE Collaborates with the Division of Infectious Diseases, Miriam Hospital, Brown University and studies the spectrum of HIV disease and the Natural History of HIV disease in Southern India through the Fogarty program of Brown University.

Other ongoing projects with Brown University:

• Usage of generic antiretroviral therapy in Indian setting
• Reliability, validity and acceptability of assessment of adherence to Antiretroviral Treatment in Chennai
• Fat redistribution syndrome following HAART
• ARV Resistance studies
• A Randomized Controlled clinical trial of Structured Intermittent HAART Therapy (SIT) vs. Continuous HAART Therapy in HIV-positive patients in South India.
• HBV, HCV co-infection in persons attending HIV VCT services
• Prevalence and Incidence of STIs of HIV negative men attending STD clinic of Govt. Hospital and sero-negative wives of HIV infected male patients attending VHS-YRGCARE.

YRGCARE collaborates with Sankara Nethralaya and studies the Ophthalmic manifestations in persons with HIV disease.

Through a collaboration with Ragas Dental College ,Oral manifestations in persons with HIV are documented.

YRGCARE is one of the sites of HIV Prevention Trial Network (HPTN) of National Institutes of Health, USA (NIH). Under this network YRGCARE is involved in the following studies:

• HPTN033: Incidence of HIV among persons with high-risk behaviour
• HPTN052: A Randomized Trial to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Antiretroviral Therapy plus HIV Primary care versus HIV Primary Care alone to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV-1 in serodiscordant couples.-HPTN/NIH multisite study (ongoing)

YRGCARE is one of the sites of Adult AIDS Clinical Trial Group (AACTG) of National Institutes of Health, USA (NIH). Under this network YRGCARE is involved in the following study.

ACTG5175: A Phase III, Randomized, Open-Label Evaluation of the Efficacy of Three Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Combinations for Initial Antiretroviral Treatment of HIV-1 Infected Persons in Resource-Limited Countries

ACTG5230: A pilot study of Lopinavir/Ritonavir in Participants Experiencing Virology Relapse on NNRTI- Containing Regimens

ACTG5274/Remember: Manual of Procedures and Supplemental Materials (MOPS) .

Sero Epidimology

Sero-epidemiology has a critical role in assessing the current level or burden of HIV infection among populations at risk, monitoring patterns in transmission, detecting epidemics and measuring the impact of community based prevention programmes. HIV sero-prevalence and sero-incidence data contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology of HIV, the development of sound health policy, the appropriate provision of resources and the planning of programmes for the primary and secondary prevention of infection.

The laboratory also serves as the testing site for samples collected from a research project, which YRG CARE is conducting in collaboration with John Hopkins University and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), USA. Called the NIMH Collaborative HIV/STD Prevention Trial, the study will last for five years and will be conducted simultaneously in India as well as five other countries, namely Uganda, Peru, China, Russia and Zimbabwe. Assisted by the Audio Computer Assisted Self Interviewing system (ACASI) – the researchers will be determining the prevalence of HIV, STDs and risk behaviour in a number of slums in Chennai.

Low Cost Lab Method

Monitoring HIV infection – it was reported that a decline in the serum titer of antibody to the p24 protein and a rise in p24 antigen occurs as a HIV positive individual progresses to the most serious phase of the disease. Although many clinicians are now monitoring infection using viral load testing, the p24 antigen assay continues to provide information at a much reduced cost and with faster turnaround times.