PROVIDENCE – As the city celebrated World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, with nine prominent buildings bathed in red light, The Miriam Hospital celebrated an important milestone in AIDS research, care and prevention – its 10th year conducting clinical trials as part of the National Institutes of Health-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group.
In the last decade, researchers at The Miriam have conducted nearly 50 clinical trials in partnership with the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Harvard Partners. The work, according to researchers, has advanced clinical care for many Rhode Islanders with HIV and AIDS.
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The most significant advances in HIV and AIDS care has been in the development of new medications for HIV treatment, putting them together in combinations that are highly effective, said Karen Tashima, director of the HIV Clinical Trials Program at The Miriam.
The results have been dramatic, according to Tashima: “Patients are not being hospitalized, there has been a dramatic decrease in hospital rates, and a really wonderful decrease in mortality.”
“These studies provide our patients with access to cutting-edge research and medications that are designed to improve their quality of life until effective vaccines and a cure are found,” Tashima said.
Among the current trials now underway is an assessment of the efficacy and safety of using the human papillomavirus vaccine, Gardasilâ, in treating HIV-infected women, whose immune system is compromised. Tashima said that this research was critical, because HIV-positive women are not only more likely to be infected with HPV, but they also have a higher rate of cervical cancer, which is caused by HPV.
The stigma surrounding HIV and its treatment is still troublesome, Tashima said. “Those of use who work in this field would love to have the stigma go away.”
One way to do that, Tashima suggested, would be if everyone got tested for HIV as a part of routine checkups. “There is a campaign underway to promote routine HIV testing with providers around the state. If we make the testing more routine, it will allow people to know their status, reduce risk and [any stigma] attached,” she said.
About 40 percent of the clinic’s patients are women who have been with infected with HIV, in large part by sexual contact. “The bottom line is that anyone who is having sex and not using condoms is at risk,” Tashima said. “Sex is universal, it can affect any one.”
