A UNSW researcher is the only Australian and one of only three people outside of the US to be listed in the top 10 HIV/AIDS researchers in the world.
Professor Andrew Carr, who is based at St Vincent’s Hospital, was named by Science as the author with the seventh highest impact in the field over the past decade. Authors who had the most citations per paper, with a minimum of 100 publications, were listed.
“It was a pleasant surprise,” said Professor Carr, who averaged 52.9 cites per paper. “One of the things that is clear from the published figures is that the US has far more money to research HIV/AIDS than other countries” he said.
While that pays off with some great results, in some instances, other researchers and institutions punch above their weight.
He is best known for his work on the complications of antiretroviral therapy. He was the first to describe a very common and clinically important side effect of therapy: HIV lipodystrophy, which changes the way body fat is distributed, and which causes metabolic changes that increase the risk of heart disease.
“Patients looked terrible because they had swollen bellies and fat loss around the face, arms and legs,” he said. “It led many patients to stop their drugs five or six years ago.”
More recently, Professor Carr’s work has focused on the links between HIV, antiretroviral therapy and heart disease.
“One of the more surprising findings in this area in the past few years is that HIV also increases the risk of heart disease,” he said. ”So the best way to avoid heart disease is probably to be on treatment, but treatment that does not affect the body’s metabolism.
Professor Carr’s research also focuses on other side-effects of HIV treatments such as osteoporosis, kidney disease and diabetes.