Researchers look for answers to HIV

Centralised repository of samples from AIDS patients being set up

Indian researchers might be able to answer some crucial questions on HIV by tap ping into a central is ed repository of serum samples that the government is building. The Department of Biotechnology and Indian Council of Medical Research pooled in ~20.8 cr ore in August this year to setup this repository, which would most likely be housed in the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune.

Why is it that some Indians who are exposed to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) don’t get Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)? How do the anti-HIV and antituberculosis drugs interact with each other inside patients who have both the diseases? What is the pattern of drug resistance in the HIV-positive population? These are just three of the many crucial questions that Indian researchers might be able to answer by tapping into a centralised repository of serum samples that the government is building. The samples would be collected from AIDS patients, and from people who are at a high risk of contracting it.

Think of it as a centralised library, where not just samples but other epidemiological data such as incidence and distribution of disease, medical history and social behaviour of a particular population — for example, men who have sex with men or intravenous drug users —are characterised, catalogued and periodically updated. According to UNAIDS, India has 2.1 million people living with HIV, third highest after South Africa and Nigeria in the world.

The Department of Biotechnology and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) pooled in ~20.8 crore in August this year, to set up this repository, which would most likely be housed in the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune. The partner research institutes are currently finalising standard operating procedures of collecting the samples and data. This mechanism would be used to harmonise the data that already exists with Indian research institutes working on AIDS, before linking all the data together. In the next phase, this database would be expanded by reaching out to the populations of interest — people who are exposed to the virus but don’t get AIDS, people who are at a high risk of getting AIDS, the ones who are on AIDS treatment, who just got AIDS, people showing resistance to anti-HIV drugs, and people who have AIDS plus other diseases such as tuberculosis or hepatitis C. “This is going to be a very rich data,” said Sanjay Madhav Mehendale, additional director general of ICMR. “We’d be able to tell researchers, look we