People with HIV are commonly exposed to opioids, whether prescribed for chronic pain, prescribed for opioid use disorder, or injected as heroin and have nearly double the risk of overdose compared to uninfected people who use opioids. With the current expanding national opioid crisis, the overlapping exposure of HIV and opioids is sure to persist into the future and is at risk of increasing through outbreaks.
In this collaborative project with Boston Medical Center and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, we propose to leverage HIV and host genomic information and investigate the mechanisms that control HIV-1 latency reversal in patients using opioids. We will test the hypothesis that opioid use limits HIV-1 latency reversal and translation efficiencies, when compared to HIV-1 latency reversal in the absence of opioid exposure.
This project is currently recruiting for a qualified postdoctoral candidate