# Clinical Research Sites for the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study  (MACS/WIHS-CCS)

> **NIH NIH U01** · ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · 2020 · $4,235,154

## Abstract

Principal Investigator: Anastos, Kathryn/Sharma Anjali
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
With increasingly effective universal antiretroviral therapy (ART), people living with HIV (PLWH) may now
live nearly normal lifespans. With that success however, comes a series of chronic HIV-related comorbidities,
whose mechanisms are poorly understood, but thought to be related to inflammation and immune activation.
As PLWH age, they are experiencing this high burden of non-AIDS comorbidities at younger than expected age,
including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, cancers, and neurocognitive and functional impairment -
leading some to suggest that HIV may both accentuate AND accelerate aging. The Women's Interagency HIV
Study (WIHS) and the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) cohorts, with long-term follow up over 25 and
35 years provide the ability to measure the onset, progression and impact of HIV-related comorbid disease and
provide a platform for critically important translational studies of pathogenesis in cardiovascular disease
(CVD), human papillomavirus (HPV), aging, and HIV-disease progression. As these two highly successful and
critically important cohorts merge, the Bronx Clinical Research Site (CRS) will support the new Combined
Cohort Study (CCS) in an effort to understand and advance the study of HIV infection and its treatment, with a
focus on HIV-related comorbidities and aging with HIV. The Bronx CRS will provide scientific leadership to
the CCS in three specific areas: CVD, microbiome studies, and HPV infection and disease. In particular, the
Bronx CRS will provide innovative scientific leadership in studying CVD among PLWH with a longitudinal
echocardiography study and a high-caliber Echo Reading Center, including cutting-edge cardiovascular
imaging, and the study of CVD in relation to inflammatory markers, metabolomics, and microbiome among
PLWH. The Bronx CRS will continue to follow our large numbers of well-characterized persons living with and
without HIV, as well as recruit primarily racial and ethnic minority men and women with or at-risk for HIV to
reflect our local NYC HIV epidemic, thus allowing us to investigate the impact of age, sex, race/ethnicity, and
health disparities on HIV disease progression and its relation to comorbid illnesses across the lifespan. The
value of these studies goes far beyond the United States, to inform the global HIV epidemic, and care of PLWH.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9906150
- **Project number:** 5U01HL146204-02
- **Recipient organization:** ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathryn M. Anastos
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $4,235,154
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-04-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9906150

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9906150, Clinical Research Sites for the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study  (MACS/WIHS-CCS) (5U01HL146204-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9906150. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*
