: The Manhattan HIV Brain Bank, a member of the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium, is a resource for the provision of well-characterized tissues and fluids from HIV-infected patients to NeuroAIDS investigators. In the previous funding period, infrastructure to facilitate the collection and distribution of tissues, fluids and information was built. We have thus established a successful HIV organ donation program in a seriously ill, largely minority and disadvantaged inner city population. In the next funding period, we propose: to increase the provision of information, tissues, and fluids from HIV-infected patients to qualified researchers investigating HIV pathogenesis; to establish a web site from which qualified investigators can learn about our program and manage transactions regarding specimen withdrawals, as well as download modular portions of a malleable database to facilitate recruitment, neurologic analysis, and neuropsychologic analysis of diverse patient populations; to continue development of collaborations with other large studies interested in HIV pathogenesis; for purposes of standardization, to participate in NNTC quality assurance programs; to continue to recruit HIV-infected patients into an organ donation program preceded by a longitudinal neurologic, neuropsychologic, and psychiatric study; to examine traditional clinico-pathologic correlations of premortem function with postmortem pathology; to focus on co-morbidities and health disparities in HIV-related CNS and PNS disorders; to define contributions of liver disease, substance disorders, and HIV on cognitive and neurologic dysfunction; and to create an organ donation program in an HIV-negative control cohort, that will serve as a source of virologic control materials and also aid in the dissection of hepatic influences on NeuroAIDS disorders.
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