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American physician-scientist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the American comedian and raconteur, see Myron Cohen.
Myron S. Cohen | |
---|---|
Born | Myron Scott Cohen 7 May 1950 |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Rush Medical College University of Michigan Yale University |
Known for | HIV Prevention Trials Network 052 study[1] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | HIV, Medicine, Epidemiology |
Institutions | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill HIV Prevention Trials Network |
Doctoral students | Kimberly Powers |
Myron Scott Cohen (born May 7, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American physician-scientist who has made substantial contributions to our understanding of the transmission prevention of transmission of HIV. He is best known as chief architect of HIV Prevention Trials Network 052, a large-scale randomized clinical trial which demonstrated proof-of-concept for “treatment as prevention”: treating an HIV-infected person with antiviral drugs makes them less contagious and prevents transmission to their sexual partners. Cohen is J. Herbert Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also co-chair of the National Institutes of Health's HIV Prevention Trials Network.
Cohen graduated from James H. Bowen High School in Chicago, and earned a bachelor of science degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his M.D. degree from Rush Medical College of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and did residency training in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. He completed an infectious disease fellowship at Yale University. Cohen joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980.[citation needed]
Cohen was among the first to outline the role of STD co-infections in the sexual transmission of HIV.
Not long after the first FDA-approved drug treatment for HIV/AIDS, AZT, appeared in 1987, Cohen began studying the effect of this and later drugs on the amount of virus in genital secretions. This led to the idea that people taking these drugs might be less contagious. In 2005 Cohen launched a clinical study, known as HPTN 052, of 1,763 couples where only one person is HIV-infected. The results indicated that early antiviral therapy reduced sexual transmission by at least 96 per cent. Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS, called it a “game-changer,”[2] The Economist speculated on “The End of AIDS,”[3] and treatment as prevention became a central part of global HIV/AIDS prevention strategy.[4]
In December 2011, Science magazine, named treatment as prevention and HPTN 052 the scientific ‘Breakthrough of the Year.’ Its editor Bruce Alberts said “The [HPTN 052] results have galvanized efforts to end the world’s AIDS epidemic in a way that would have been inconceivable even a year ago.”[5]
Cohen is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society for Microbiology. H In 2012 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine. He serves as an editor of the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases[citation needed]
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