Southeast Translational Alcohol and HIV Research (STAHR) Center

STAHR Center P60

The Southeast Translational Alcohol and HIV Research (STAHR) Center is a comprehensive Alcohol-HIV research center established from a P60 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The STAHR Center’s overarching goal is to conduct studies that help people with HIV reduce alcohol consumption or to reduce alcohol’s harmful effects on health. 

The center features three interrelated projects focused on alcohol, gut dysbiosis and its derived metabolites, glucagon like peptide 1 (GLP-1), inflammation, and cardiovascular (CVD) risk among people with HIV. The first two projects, GEM HIV and GUT CVD HIV, are ancillary studies to our ongoing META HIV CVD RCT and use Veterans Aging Cohort Study data in order to understand the role of GLP-1, a protein made by the gut, and tryptophan breakdown products as they relate to alcohol’s changes to the bacteria in the gut and cardiovascular disease. 

The third project, GL1DER HIV RCT, is a randomized clinical trial that will test whether a GLP-1 receptor agonist (semaglutide) versus placebo decreases alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking and cardiovascular risk among people with HIV. 

These projects are supported by the Administrative Core and Dissemination Core at Vanderbilt Health, and the Resource Core at the Norton Research Institute in conjunction with the Integrated Metagenomics and Metabolomics Core at the University of Louisville Alcohol Research Center. 

For more information, visit the NIHRePORTER page.

We hope that our research will advance our understanding of alcohol’s effect on cardiovascular disease among people with HIV.