Nevirapine (NVP), sold under the brand name Viramune among others, is a medication used to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS, specifically HIV-1. It is generally recommended for use with other antiretroviral medications. It may be used to prevent mother to child spread during birth but is not recommended following other exposures. It is taken by mouth.
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens that take advantage of an opportunity not normally available. These opportunities can stem from a variety of sources, such as a weakened immune system, an altered microbiome, or breached integumentary barriers. Many of these pathogens do not necessarily cause disease in a healthy host that has a non-compromised immune system, and can, in some cases, act as commensals until the balance of the immune system is disrupted. Opportunistic infections can also be attributed to pathogens which cause mild illness in healthy individuals but lead to more serious illness when given the opportunity to take advantage of an immunocompromised host.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
The AIDS Clinical Trials Group network (ACTG) is one of the largest HIV clinical trials organizations in the world, playing a major role in setting standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and the developing world. The ACTG is composed of, and directed by, leading clinical scientists in HIV/AIDS therapeutic research. The ACTG is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.
Merle Alden Sande was a leading American infectious-diseases expert whose early recognition of the looming public health crisis posed by AIDS led to the development of basic protocols for how to handle infected patients. He graduated from Washington State University and received his MD degree from the University of Washington, School of Medicine in Seattle.
Michael S. Saag is a physician and prominent HIV/AIDS researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He holds the Jim Straley Chair in AIDS Research, is Director of the Division of Infectious Disease and of the William C. Gorgas Center for Geographic Medicine, and Director of the Center for AIDS Research. He is also the founder of the 1917 Clinic, a comprehensive AIDS treatment and research center at UAB Saag is a frequent lecturer at AIDS conferences around the world and is credited with performing pioneering clinical trials for several antiretroviral drugs now in common use for HIV treatment and for first demonstrating the clinical value of "viral-load testing" in HIV/AIDS treatment. In 2009 Saag was elected chairman of the HIV Medicine Association of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In 2019 Saag began serving on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Anita Rachlis, M.D. is a Canadian HIV/AIDS researcher and is the principal author of the HIV treatment guidelines in Canada. She is an associate scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Joseph Masci is an American physician, educator and author based in Elmhurst, New York City. He is Professor of Medicine, Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Professor of Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He served as the Director of Department of Medicine at the Elmhurst Hospital Center from 2002 through 2017 when he became Chairman of the Department of Global Health.
Diane Havlir is an American physician who is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research considers novel therapeutic strategies to improve the lives of people with HIV and to support public health initiatives in East Africa. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.
Viviana Simon is a Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). She is a member of the ISMMS Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute. Her research considers viral-host interactions and the mode of action of retroviral restriction factors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Simon developed an antibody test that can determine immunity to Coronavirus disease 2019.
Laura Jane Waters is a British physician, genitourinary consultant at the National Health Service (NHS) Mortimer Market Centre in London. She is chair of the British HIV Association (BHIVA) and advises the NHS on HIV treatment. Waters is a regular contributor to Boyz magazine, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic provided regular advice to HIV-positive people.
David "Davey" M. Smith, is an American translational research virologist, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego, co-director of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research, and vice chair of research in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego. His research interests include transmission, prevention, and treatment of both HIV and SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19). Since joining the UC San Diego faculty in 2003, Smith has been awarded more than $37 million in federal funding as a principal investigator. His research interests include transmission, prevention, and treatment of both HIV and COVID-19.
Valerie Ellen Stone is an American physician who is a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School. She serves as Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital. She specializes in the management of HIV/AIDS, health disparities and improving the quality of medical education.
Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.
Onyema Eberechukwu Ogbuagu is an American-born infectious diseases physician, educator, researcher, and clinical trial investigator, who was raised and educated in Nigeria. He is an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, CT and is the director of the Yale AIDS Program clinical trials unit. His research contributions have focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and COVID-19 vaccination and treatment clinical trials. He switched his focus at the beginning of the 2019 COVID pandemic and participated as a principal investigator (PI) on the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine trials and the Remdesivir SIMPLE trial in 2020 and 2021. In pursuit of his global health component of his career, Ogbuagu also supports postgraduate physician medical education programs in low and middle income countries in sub-Saharan Africa in Rwanda (2013–2018) and Liberia as well as HIV treatment programs in Liberia.
John Gill Bartlett was an American physician and medical researcher, specializing in infectious diseases. He is known as a pioneer in HIV/AIDS research and for his work on vancomycin as a treatment for Clostridioides difficile infection.
John R. Mascola is an American physician-scientist, immunologist and infectious disease specialist. He was the director of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also served as a principal advisor to Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, on vaccines and biomedical research affairs. Mascola is the current Chief Scientific Officer for ModeX Therapeutics.
Bisola Ojikutu is an American physician, infectious disease specialist, and health equity researcher. In July 2021, she was appointed as the executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. Ojikutu is the fifth Commissioner of Public Health for the City of Boston and the first Black person to permanently hold this position. She currently serves on the Cabinet of Mayor Michelle Wu.
Yvette Calderon is an American physician who is Chair and Professor of Emergency Medicine in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research has focused on health disparities in Manhattan, with a particular focus on HIV and hepatitis C. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.
