Researchers from the OU Health Sciences Center are studying the processes that occur when people who are infected with HIV interact with parasitic diseases that both humans and animals carry.

Lead researcher Hélène Carabin said researchers are trying to discover how people with HIV and infected with parasites react to diseases caused by the parasites differently than HIV-negative people infected with the parasites.

Federal stimulus money recently boosted funding for Carabin’s research.

The study is being conducted in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, an area where about 20 percent of the population suffers from HIV, Carabin said.

“No one has ever looked at this before,” said Carabin, associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the OU Health Sciences Center. “It’s very important in a country where both HIV and parasites are common.”

She said the research could lead to more efforts to prevent diseases resulting from HIV and parasites.

“In theory [the diseases] are totally preventable,” Carabin said. “You can prevent them with public health intervention, providing clean water, sewage, sanitization, meat inspections, food management.”

Carabin said the study is important because it gives OU students the opportunity to gain experience in global health, which has had more attention recently with the H1N1 pandemic.

Christine Benner, public health and epidemiology graduate, said the study is in its beginning stages. She has been in Africa since September.

Benner said the study has important implications for the field of global public health.

“The cooperative effort [of the study] is the main benefit to the population here, and it gives us a chance to refine and perfect the methodology of this research,” Benner said.

She said more universities would include global public health studies in undergraduate programs in the future.

“Global health is a big emerging field and it offers a lot,” Benner said. “OU should try to increase its faculty and its curriculum for students who are interested in this field.”