Eleanor Wilson, MD, MHS

Eleanor (Pitt) Wilson, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, attended medical school at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and subspecialty fellowship training in Infectious Disease at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. She obtained her Masters in Clinical Research as part of a collaborative program between Duke University and the National Institutes of Health.

Despite dramatic improvements in the life expectancy of persons with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, non-AIDS events such as liver disease and cancer are now the predominant causes of morbidity and mortality in treated populations. Markers of immune activation have been associated with HIV disease progression, predict mortality, and persist despite effective antiretroviral therapy; patients co-infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV have higher levels of immune activation than those infected with HIV or HCV alone and are at increased risk for mortality due to liver and cardiovascular disease. Understanding the role of immune activation in the rapid progression of hepatic fibrosis in patients with HIV and HCV co-infection will help us to address this burgeoning public health problem, and at the same time, understand how the clearance of a chronic viral infection affects global immune activation and what can be done to augment treatment responses and improve rates of viral clearance and resolution of hepatic fibrosis.

My scientific interests and investigations have focused on the alterations to innate and adaptive immunity in chronic viral infections, including HIV and viral hepatitis. Beginning with my work with Dr. Robert Siliciano during medical school investigating HIV persistence in latently infected T cell subsets, extending through my fellowship research with Dr. Irini Sereti regarding the mechanisms connecting soluble and cellular immune activation with clinical outcomes in HIV, and now working with Dr. Shyam Kottilil on the reconstitution of innate and adaptive immunology following clearance of HCV, I have developed expertise in the translational research techniques required to address these questions. As a Principal Investigator and Lead Associate Investigator on multiple clinical trials in the beginning of my career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and now at the Institute of Human Virology, I am eager to continue working on ways to improve the health of patients with chronic viral infections and advanced liver disease.