Thank you for visiting the ALIVE study website. You can use the navigation bar at the top or the quick links below to learn about our history, current and past research, upcoming events, study staff, opportunities to get involved with our projects, and much more.
The ALIVE study is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a part
of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIDA's mission is to lead the nation in
bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction.
The AIDS Linked to the Intravenous Experience (ALIVE) Study is a long-standing community based research effort that includes past and current injection drug users (IDUs). ALIVE has been ongoing since 1988 and is one of the longest-running community-based cohorts of IDUs in existence. The primary objectives when the study started were to characterize the incidence and natural history of HIV among injection drug users (IDUs). Since 1998, the research objectives have evolved to include characterization of access to and impact of treatment for HIV, evaluation of non-AIDS outcomes among an aging cohort as well as ascertainment of the incidence, natural history and treatment of co-infections such as hepatitis C virus. Importantly, the ALIVE study serves as a platform for numerous other research studies focused on IDUs in Baltimore. These range in scope from focusing on HIV associated co-infections and comorbidities (e.g., HCV and pulmonary disease) to intervention studies.
