The Bastyr University Center for Research in HIV/AIDS will function to meet four needs: (1) to describe forms and patterns of use of alternative medicine (AM) therapies for the treatment of patients with HIV infection and acquired immune deficiency (AIDS) prescribed by practitioners and self- administered by HIV+ individuals in the United States; (2) to screen and evaluate therapies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS from the field of alternative medicine; (3) to provide training to alternative medical practitioners in the scientific evaluation of their therapies; and (4) to educate the conventional scientific biomedical community in alternative medical treatment of HIV infection and AIDS. The Center will focus on five program areas of alternative medicine: nutrition, traditional and ethnomedicine, energetic therapies, pharmacological and biological therapies and bioelectromagnetic medicine. The Bastyr Center operations will include three core functions. The Clinical Data Section will gather and analyze descriptive and clinical data from clinical sites where HIV+ patients are being treated by alternative means, provide technical assistance to awardees of pilot research project grants, and manage surveillance of adverse events associated with HIV/AIDS alternative medicine. Both retrospective and prospective observational clinical data will be analyzed by the Center's database. The proposed structure of the Bastyr Center includes an Advisory Board, a Safety & Ethics Committee, the Bastyr University IRB, a network of consultants, and a network of clinical data contributors.
| Standish, L J; Greene, K B; Bain, S et al. (2001) Alternative medicine use in HIV-positive men and women: demographics, utilization patterns and health status. AIDS Care 13:197-208 |
| Greene, K B; Berger, J; Reeves, C et al. (1999) Most frequently used alternative and complementary therapies and activities by participants in the AMCOA study. J Assoc Nurses AIDS Care 10:60-73 |
| Calabrese, C; Wenner, C A; Reeves, C et al. (1998) Treatment of human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients with complementary and alternative medicine: a survey of practitioners. J Altern Complement Med 4:281-7 |
