Infectious Diseases

A newer vaccine against hepatitis B virus was clearly superior to an older vaccine type in inducing a protective antibody response among people living with HIV who didn’t respond to prior vaccination, according to the results of an international study led by a Weill Cornell Medicine investigator.

The first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial evaluating the impact of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies on the risk of developing long COVID was led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Individuals with compromised immunity and persistent COVID-19 infections can harbor drug-resistant variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which have the potential to spread to the general population, a study by Weill Cornell Medicine, the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the epigenetics company TruDiagnostic have uncovered DNA markers associated with retroelements, remnants of ancient viral genetic material, in our genes that act as highly accurate epigenetic clocks predicting chronological age.

Weill Cornell Medicine has received $4.2 million to study how the immune system in some people infected with HIV can keep the virus under control, which could lead to novel therapeutic strategies for thwarting or eliminating HIV.

A multinational team led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators developed a test that will help measure the persistence of HIV in people affected by viral strains found predominantly in Africa—a vital tool in the search for an HIV cure that will benefit patients around the world.

While there are highly effective treatments for the hepatitis C virus (HCV), only 1 in 5 Medicaid enrollees diagnosed with HCV started treatment, according to a retrospective study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University’s Ithaca campus. 

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $11.6 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health to study the effects cannabis, including marijuana and compounds derived from it, may have on the brains of those living with HIV.

While the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have passed, the effects of post-COVID conditions on public health remain. A new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators has found that the risk of long COVID and its symptoms present very differently across diverse populations and suggests that further investigation is needed to accurately define the disease and improve diagnosis and treatment. 

Patients with HIV had similar treatment outcomes to patients without HIV when treated for mpox with an antiviral drug called tecovirimat.

Dr. Kyu Rhee, a distinguished Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientist, has been elected to the esteemed Association of American Physicians.

A treatment combining two antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 strongly protected high-risk people with early COVID-19 symptoms from hospitalization and death in an international Phase 2/3 clinical trial conducted in the first half of 2021 and co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.

Weill Cornell Medicine, Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have received a $3.5 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, to improve screening and preventative treatment of cervical cancer for women living with HIV in low-resource countries.

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $7.8 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study whether the antibiotic doxycycline may slow the progression of the chronic lung disease emphysema in people living with well-controlled HIV.

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health to establish a new multi-institutional center for tuberculosis (TB) research and training the next generation of TB investigators.

Among participants who had hepatitis C and who injected drugs, those treated at a non-stigmatizing “accessible care” treatment center co-located with a syringe service program (SSP) were nearly three times more likely to be cured of the infectious disease compared with those referred out to local clinicians through patient navigation, according to a randomized clinical trial led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

A patient living with HIV who received a blood stem cell transplant for high-risk acute myeloid leukemia has been free of the virus for 14 months after stopping HIV antiretroviral drug treatment, suggesting a cure, according to the Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists who performed the transplant and managed her care.

An FDA-approved drug that has been in clinical use for more than 70 years may protect against lung injury and the risk of blood clots in severe COVID-19 and other disorders that cause immune-mediated damage to the lungs.

Omicron — the latest coronavirus variant to be labeled a “variant of concern” — has been spreading rapidly in the United States and dozens of countries around the world.

Convalescent plasma did not reduce the risk of intubation or death for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a large, international clinical trial conducted by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators in collaboration with lead investigators at McMaster University.