Ahizechukwu Eke
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research
Treating HIV during pregnancy protects mothers' health and prevents passing the virus to babies. In the US, Nigeria and worldwide, the preferred first treatment increasingly includes dolutegravir (DTG).
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
pregnancy
women living with HIV
antiretroviral therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Assess whether dolutegravir-based antiretroviral therapy (TLD) is associated with metabolic syndrome risk in a prospective cohort of pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV and their offspring at four sites in the US and Nigeria.
- Diagnose maternal metabolic syndrome using NCEP ATP III clinical criteria, and assess offspring using cohort-specific percentiles for waist circumference, systolic blood pressure and serum glucose.
- Compare protein and metabolite patterns in maternal blood during and after pregnancy, and in umbilical cord blood, between women with metabolic syndrome and controls, using integrated targeted proteomics and metabolomics.
- Identify biomarker clusters linked to poor maternal and child metabolic health that could allow early detection of metabolic syndrome and guide personalized HIV treatment choices.
More about the research
Emerging data link DTG-based regimens to excess weight gain, obesity and metabolic syndrome in women living with HIV. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of problems such as large waist size, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. During pregnancy, these problems raise the risk of preterm birth, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, abnormal birth weight, Cesarean delivery and newborn intensive care. How DTG causes these effects is poorly understood.
Why it matters
Dolutegravir-based HIV treatment is now a preferred first-line therapy worldwide, but its link to weight gain and metabolic problems may endanger pregnancies. Blood biomarkers found in this work could allow early detection of metabolic syndrome before symptoms appear. They could also guide more personalized HIV treatment choices for pregnant women in the US, Nigeria and elsewhere, protecting the health of both mothers and babies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sharon A Nachman
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research
Advance antiretroviral therapy for pregnant and postpartum women with HIV and accelerate pharmacokinetic, safety and antiviral efficacy evaluation of potent, durable antiretroviral drugs for women, infants, children and adolescents toward licensure and correct dosing.
Linda May
East Carolina University, NC·Physiology
Determine how aerobic, resistance and combined exercise during pregnancy in women with overweight or obesity affect infant heart and metabolic health and growth patterns, compared with infants of non-exercising mothers.
Jonathan Purnell
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Public Health & Epidemiology
Compare birth size for gestational age, infant weight gain and BMI through age six in children of 2,120 women who had bariatric surgery before pregnancy versus 21,200 children of women without surgery, matched on pre-surgery or pre-pregnancy BMI.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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