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Living longer with HIV means more age-related disease: study to outline how


September 10, 2014

Dr. Curtis Cooper is part of a team that has been awarded a five year grant worth $1.2 million by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to study age-related diseases, such as liver, renal, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers among HIV-positive individuals. It may be that people infected with HIV have higher risk of developing age-related diseases, compared to the general population, but to date no study has comprehensively examined this question in Canada. The study that Dr. Cooper is co-leading will document age-related diseases among HIV-positive individuals. It will also outline differences in the age-related conditions between key affected HIV-positive populations across Canada, including persons of Aboriginal ancestry, African/Caribbean/Black individuals, people who inject drugs and homosexual men. This knowledge is essential for estimating the unique health needs of aging HIV-positive individuals and for understanding the role of HIV and the treatment of age-related diseases. Grant summaries are available through CIHR’s Funded Research Database.

About the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) is the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and is an affiliated institute of the University of Ottawa, closely associated with the university’s Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. OHRI includes more than 1,700 scientists, clinical investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff conducting research to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease.

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Paddy Moore
Communications and Public Relations
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
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