Media Contact: Barry Zepel
Telephone: 310-855-3674
[email protected]
LOS ANGELES (October 5, 1999) -- Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, along with researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and University of Southern California (USC), are seeking persons in advanced stages of HIV to participate in a study of treatment options for neurological damage caused by AIDS. Persons who participate will undergo detailed neurological and neuro-psychological testing and assessment every six months.
The National Institutes of Mental Health has awarded a five-year, $5 million grant to establish the California Neuro-AIDS Tissue Network (CNTN), the first effort to link important clinical information and tissue samples for research. Coordinated from San Diego, the CNTN will provide AIDS researchers, who have a research protocol reviewed and approved by a scientific panel, access to clinical information and tissue samples.
"Our ability to manage HIV-related neurologic diseases has trailed behind the major advances made in the treatment of the immune defects associated with HIV infection," said Eric S. Daar, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, the AIDS and Immune Disorders Center, and lead investigator at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "This study will allow for the systematic collection of information that may have a dramatic impact on how clinicians diagnose and treat the devastating neurologic complications of HIV disease."
All results will be available to the patient and his or her primary physician. "A great deal can be learned by studying these tissues, particularly when they are coupled with specific detailed clinical information gathered from living persons," said Igor Grant, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the USCD School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. "We hope, through this new resource, to make more rapid progress in our understanding of the neurological effects of AIDS and that this new knowledge will lead to better therapies."
Study researchers are hoping to discover if the virus in the central nervous system is different from that of other tissue; what types of injuries occur in the brain; what part or parts of cells are damaged; whether the brain provides a sanctuary for HIV because of its protective barrier; and what the best approaches are to protect the brain from damage.
For more information, please call 1-877-543-8090, or visit the California Neuro-AIDS Tissue Network web site at http://www.cntn.ucsd.edu.
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For media information and to arrange an interview, please call Barry Zepel, 310-855-3674. Thanks for not including media contact information in stories
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