An important aspect of the MRC Unit: The Gambia’s strategic plan is to foster and develop a West African medical research network providing a bridge for anglophone, francophone and lusophone African research communities. To this end, a HIV Research Network including the MRC Unit: The Gambia, Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), (Dakar) and the Bandim Health Project/National Public Health Laboratory (BHP), Guinea Bissau, has been established. The hub of the Network is at Cheikh Anta Diop University, and is coordinated by Dr Assan Jaye (MRC) and Professor Souleymane Mboup (UCAD).
HIV/AIDS remains a major public health problem in West Africa with a prevalence of around 3-4% for HIV-1 and HIV-2. The Network has a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the two infections which have significantly different natural histories, through the development of one cohesively managed cohort consisting of all the HIV-1 and HIV-2 infected patients, data and biological samples accumulated during 20+ years of investigation by the MRC Unit: The Gambia, the Bandim Health Project (BHP) in Guinea Bissau and UCAD in Senegal.
About 1 million people are infected with HIV-2 in West Africa, and whereas there are a few non-progressors following HIV-1 infection (typically 5%), about 50% of HIV-2 infected individuals do not show disease progression for many years (15-20+) following infection. The amalgamation of cohorts provides the opportunity to develop epidemiological and laboratory outputs from the population-base cohorts, establish unified and shared database resources and allow the use of a unified bio-bank repository. This will provide the largest population of HIV-2 infected subjects in the world and allow comparisons with HIV-1 infected subjects in the same cohort. Thus, the Network provides a unique platform for immunological studies contributing to vaccine development and controlled trials of antiretroviral regimens for HIV-2-infected people.
