School of medicine

Yale professor cochairs NIH group

Richard Lifton, chair and Sterling Professor of Genetics, will cochair the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative working group, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced March 30. The group will include experts in precision medicine and clinical research studies and is charged with soliciting opinions and developing a vision for the initiative, announced by President Obama in January. Formed as a working group of the advisory committee to the NIH director, the team of experts will deliver a preliminary report in September that will inform efforts to accelerate the understanding of individual differences that play a role in health, with the goal of better prevention and treatment strategies tailored for each person. Lifton, also professor of medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, uses genetic approaches to identify the genes and pathways that contribute to common human diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular, renal, and bone disease. 

Better outcomes after HIV treatment

Bianca Yuh, a third-year student at the School of Medicine, spent last summer working on her thesis with the Veterans Aging Cohort Study, a key source of data on HIV-infected veterans. She was interested in investigating factors that determine positive and negative outcomes for older people with HIV infection after they receive treatment. Yuh and her coauthors, including Janet Tate, associate research scientist in medicine at Yale School of Medicine, looked at weight status in more than 4,000 HIV-infected older adults when they started antiretroviral therapy (ART) and one year later. They also analyzed patient mortality rates within five years. The researchers found that a weight gain of 10–20 pounds was associated with lower mortality in normal-weight, HIV-infected individuals. However, there was no benefit in gaining weight for patients who were overweight or obese at the start of treatment, the study showed. Because HIV infection increases metabolic demand on patients, weight gain may indicate controlled infection and improved health, the study noted. The findings suggest that providers should advise patients that some weight gain is to be expected after ART initiation, but tell patients who are already overweight or obese to avoid weight gain with exercise and a healthy diet.

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