Providence, RI Susan Cu-Uvin, MD, a physician at The Miriam Hospital and associate professor at Brown Medical School, received national recognition today by the Ladies' Home Journal for establishing the nation's first known HIV Menopause Clinic designed to understand the compounded effects of menopause on women with HIV.

Cu-Uvin received the first annual Health Breakthrough Award presented by Ladies' Home Journal in New York City on August 2. The award is presented to medical professionals whose research and work has significantly helped women and families. Cu-Uvin is one of seven physicians and researchers who received the award fellow honorees hail from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina, and Harvard Medical School. Honorees will also be profiled in the September issue of Ladies' Home Journal, available on newsstands on August 8.

Hot flashes, depression, and brittle bones are all symptoms that have been linked to menopause, but they're also common to HIV-positive individuals on antiretroviral medication. Antiretroviral combination therapy has been successful at significantly extending the lives of those with HIV, including women who are now living long enough to experience the natural progression of menopause. Often overlooked as the lesser concern of medical issues in those with HIV, physicians face unknown territory with little information available on how to treat menopausal symptoms in HIV-positive women.

Cu-Uvin established the HIV Menopause clinic at The Miriam Hospital to help HIV-positive women through menopause, but also to gather data about how the two conditions interact and potentially aggravate HIV-related conditions such as cardiac risks, bone loss and depression. Cu-Uvin and her staff hope to gain insight into several unanswered questions including whether menopause and HIV work together to hasten bone loss, if menopause occurs earlier/later in HIV-p
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Contact: Megan Martin
mmartin@lifespan.org
401-793-7484
Lifespan
2-Aug-2006