In 1981, Charles Rinaldo, PhD, who was then a faculty member in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, was rounding with colleagues in Oakland when he came into contact with a patient suffering from Pneumocystis Pneumonia and human cytomegalovirus (CMV). That the two illnesses were presenting simultaneously suggested that the individual’s immune system had been weakened, and that he, in fact, had AIDS.
Shortly thereafter, David Lyter, a medical student at Pitt, approached Rinaldo about researching this new condition and assisted Rinaldo in recruiting approximating 70 men from the Pittsburgh region for a pilot study. Then, in 1983, with cases increasing across the country, the NIH published a request for research proposals to study AIDS. Rinaldo and Lyter worked with colleagues, including Dr. Monto Ho, and community leaders in the gay community to develop a proposal: the Pittsburgh Men’s Study. Along with Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, Pittsburgh became a part of the multi-center AIDS cohort study (MACS), receiving $4.2 million for an initial period of four years. Within the first three years of receiving funding, the Pitt Men’s Study had grown, recruiting over 1,100 participants.
Rinaldo and Lyter realized early on the need to expand their research team, adding Dr. Larry Kingsley, an epidemiologist, to help with study design methodology, and Dr. Tony Silvestre, to recruit more participants for the study. Their additions were critical to the study’s progress, with Kingsley involvement leading to the determining the risk factors for transmission.
Then, in the early 1990s, the Department of Medicine recruited John Mellors, MD, to Pitt. The former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Mellors led the study that found that AIDS-related health outcomes were directly related to the level of virus in a person’s blood when they were first infected, and he was also responsible for developing drug combination therapies to treat AIDS.
More recently, the Pitt Men’s Study has discovered that HIV trans infection of CD4 T cells by professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) is a key pathway in how the virus circumvents host immune control (Robbie Maiillaird, PhD); developed a protocol to investigate sex at birth differences in HIV persistence in blood and other tissues and determine the immunologic, microbiologic, pharmacologic, and virologic factors contributing to HIV persistence (Beej Macatangay, MD); investigated patterns of HIV decay in men and women and whether sex hormones and levels of inflammation affect these patterns (Yijia Li, MD); and determined that people living with HIV report worse lung-related quality of life (Ioannis Konstantinidis, MD, MS, and Alison Morris, MD, MS).
From identifying one of the major risk factors of the disease’s transmission to developing new ways to treat AIDS, the Pitt Men’s Study has been instrumental in the advancement of HIV research, directly impacting the community and improving the lives of the study’s participants over the past 40 years. With strong support from the Department of Medicine, the study is poised to continue making critical discoveries, leading to an even better understanding of HIV/AIDS.