EPIICAL

CARMA Global study hits recruitment target

2023

The CARMA Global study, part of the EPIICAL project, has successfully met its recruitment target and recruited 99 children and adolescents living with HIV from across the globe. The study includes children and adolescents who acquired HIV around the period of their birth and then started antiretroviral therapy (ART) at a young age to control the virus and prevent its progression.

The primary aim of CARMA Global is to investigate how the body responds to HIV and how the virus is stored and behaves in the body over time.

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Advancements in paediatric HIV research: Insights from the EPIICAL general assembly meeting 

2023

In the quest to enhance our understanding of paediatric HIV and improve treatment outcomes, the EPIICAL project has worked tirelessly for the past eight years to gather and generate knowledge on HIV in children. Established with the ambitious goal of creating models to predict how children’s bodies respond to early antiretroviral therapy (ART) and treatment interruption, the EPIICAL project has also aimed to refine methods for understanding immune,

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EPIICAL General Assembly meeting to reaffirm mission to achieve HIV remission in children

2022

The EPIICAL General Assembly was held online and in person in Venice on 2-4 November 2022. It brought together 80 participants from 29 organisations from the EPIICAL consortium. Attendees came together to discuss, among other topics, highlights of the project as a clinical and experimental platform to evaluate therapeutic strategies for HIV remission and/or cure in children, updates in the treatment and management of paediatric HIV and the vision for EPIICAL in 2024 and beyond.

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CARMA Global sites prepared and ready to enrol

2022

CARMA Global is an EPIICAL cross-sectional, multi-country, multi-site, low interventional study on children, adolescents and youth who started ART at three months or younger at least seven years ago and are currently on ART. The study aims to investigate viral reservoirs in these populations to better understand why ART is more effective in some patients than in others. In the social component, the study will collect data on attitudes towards HIV research to develop strategies to keep participants enrolled in clinical trials.

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The subphenotypes of early-treated children living with HIV-1

2022

Abstract

Subphenotypes have been identified in several heterogeneous diseases. Having a specific subphenotype often has therapeutic implications or impacts disease progression. In this study, we aimed to assess if children with HIV may show subphenotypes according to clinical, virological and immunological features.

We collected data from 40 HIV+ children included in a cross-sectional multicentric study (CARMA Study, EPIICAL Consortium). All children commenced ART <2 years,

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The EPIICAL story

2022

In 2016 the Early-treated Perinatally HIV-infected individuals: Improving Children’s Actual Life (EPIICAL) consortium began gathering scientists and clinicians specialising in paediatric HIV to work towards establishing new, scientific efforts on the early treatment of HIV to improve the lives of children and ultimately lead to the remission of HIV in children.

The main focus of the consortium was the development of a predictive platform to inform treatment strategies that would lead to HIV remission.

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Size of HIV-1 reservoir is associated with telomere shortening and immunosenescence in early-treated European children with perinatally acquired HIV-1

2021

Authors: A Dalzini, G Ballin, S Dominguez-Rodriguez, P Rojo , M.R Petrara, C Foster, N Cotugno, A Ruggiero, E Nastouli, N Klein, S Rinaldi, S Pahwa, P Rossi, C Giaquinto, P Palma , A De Rossi1, and on behalf of EPIICAL Consortium

Published in: Journal of the International AIDS Society

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Characterisation of the HIV proviral and inducible reservoir in well- suppressed children on long-term ART

2021

Authors: Gärtner K, Byott M, Heaney J, Pagliuzza A, Spyer M.J Frampton D, Rossi A.D, Palmas P, Giaquinto C, Conejo P.R, Foster C,  Rossi P, Klein N, Chomont N, Nastouli E, for the EPIICAL consortium

Presented at: Keystone symposia on molecular and cellular biology

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World AIDS Day 2021: How paediatric HIV has changed in the last 30 years

2021

It takes a community of people working together to achieve the results we are looking for: eradication HIV in children

 

The paediatric HIV pandemic has changed from when researchers first began investigating HIV in children to where we stand today.

The burden of perinatal infections, however, remains high. Perinatal infections occur when a pregnant person living with HIV passes HIV to her baby either during pregnancy,

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CARMA study publishes article in Journal of International AIDS Society

2021

The CARMA team in the EPIICAL consortium have just published the article Early ART initiation during infancy preserves natural killer cells in young European adolescents living with HIV (CARMA cohort) in the Journal of International AIDS Society.

HIV infection causes pathological changes in the natural killer cell compartment, a type of white blood cell with enzymes that kill cells infected with a virus.

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Sharing our understanding of the immune response of children living with HIV

2021

EPIICAL is proud to have presented four abstracts at the CROI conference this year, sharing updated information on viral decay and the immune response of children living with HIV who begin treatment early in life.

 

  • EFFECT OF HIV ON IMMUNE ACTIVATION AND EXHAUSTION IN CD4 AND CD8 T CELLS IN INFANTS Stefano Rinaldi, Vinh B. Dinh, Suresh Pallikkuth, Lesley D.
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The CARMA study: early infant antiretroviral therapy—Timing impacts on total HIV-1 DNA quantitation 12 years later

2020

Authors: Foster C, Domínguez-Rodríguez S, Tagarro A, et al. For the Early Treated Perinatally HIV Infected Individuals: Improving Children’s Actual Life (EPIICAL) Consortium

Published in: J Pediatr Infect Dis Soc. 2020 2020 Jul 17;piaa071

Background Strategies aimed at antiretroviral therapy (ART)–free remission will target individuals with a limited viral reser- voir.

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ushr: Understanding suppression of HIV in R

2020

Authors: Morris SE, Dziobek-Garrett L, Yates AJ and the EPIICAL consortium

Published in: BMC Bioinformatics 2020;21(1):52

Background HIV/AIDS is responsible for the deaths of one million people every year. Although mathematical modeling has provided many insights into the dynamics of HIV infection, there is still a lack of accessible tools for researchers unfamiliar with modeling techniques to apply them to their own clinical data.

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New publications from EPIICAL Consortium

2020

Just published – data on T & B cell memory and T cell function in early-treated children in the Journal of Immunology and AIDS.
Antiretroviral treatment (if started at an early stage) is able to reduce the amount of HIV virus in a child’s body. EPIICAL is studying the characteristics of the immune response and the amount of HIV virus,

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Universal Children’s Day

2019

Today, November 20th, is Universal Children’s Day. This year, we are celebrating in Cape Town, South Africa, where the EPIICAL 3rd General Assembly is being hosted. Universal Children’s Day is dedicated to the rights of the child, with one key aspect being the right for every child to access the highest standard of health. However, at the end of 2018, there were 37.9 million people living with HIV worldwide and,

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‘EARTH’ study – first patient enrolled in Mali

2019

We are delighted to report that the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Gabriel Touré in Mali (in liaison with Anne-Genevieve Marcelin, France) has enrolled its first patient in the key EPIICAL study, ‘EARTH’. This marks a new chapter in the study, with the scope of the cohort widening to include participants not only from South Africa and Mozambique, but also from the west African site in Bamako.

EARTHCohort of Early Anti-Retroviral Treatment in HIV-perinatally infected Children – is a prospective multicentre,

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1st EPIICAL Newsletter

2019

With the EPIICAL project being a hive of activity over the last year, we have collected a selection of contributions, stories and articles to bring you the very first edition of the EPIICAL newsletter! The issue contains an update on the evolution and recent progress in the HIV pediatric research coordinated by the project. We get to know the clinicians that locally sustain HIV programs and services with reports of their experience in the EARTH (‘Early Anti-Retroviral Treatment in HIV-infected Children’) study.

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CROI 2019: Oral presentation by members of the EPIICAL team

2019

The annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held on 4-7 March 2019, at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington. CROI brings together top basic, translational, and clinical researchers from around the world to share the latest studies, important developments, and best research methods in the ongoing battle against HIV/AIDS and related infectious diseases.

At this year’s event,

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