40 years later, the Pitt Men’s Study is still breaking ground in the fight against AIDS

In 1984, Charles Rinaldo launched a study to learn more about a mysterious illness befalling gay men across the U.S. He was 37 years old, only 6 years into his appointment as an assistant professor in the Pitt School of Medicine and School of Public Health, when he put the University on the map for groundbreaking AIDS research.

With the backing of a $4.2 million, four-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) contract, Rinaldo set out to recruit several thousands of gay men in the Pittsburgh tristate area to donate blood and other clinical specimens. It was the beginning of the Pitt Men’s Study, which aimed to uncover the process by which a virus leads to AIDS and the development of the disease post-diagnosis.

The Pitt Men’s Study recently commemorated 40 years of trailblazing research, including contributions to more than 1,700 scientific articles. The study is behind breakthroughs in understanding the transmission and treatment of HIV and AIDS and continues to impact the lives and careers of study participants and scientists alike.

Bringing the NIH study to Pittsburgh

When he started at Pitt, Rinaldo’s primary research focused on cytomegalovirus, a herpesvirus that can cause serious illness in people with weakened immune systems, but he soon changed course.

“Once the first CDC report on AIDS was published in 1981, I immediately realized how important and potentially central this could be to my virus immunology research,” he said. “I chose that path and never looked back.”

He pitched Pittsburgh as one of five sites for establishing the NIH Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study because the area was considered low-incidence for the disease. The federal agency also chose several high-incidence locations: Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and San Francisco, which exited the cohort after a year. Because the study welcomed both HIV-negative and HIV-positive gay male participants, the cryopreserved specimens have been able to provide valuable insight into how the body changes post-infection.

Participation wanted

Initially, getting the word out about the study was a full-court press.

“I learned in establishing the Pitt Men’s Study that you cannot do it alone. I had to engage and trust in the LGBTQ community that I was not previously a part of,” said Rinaldo.

He formed a dedicated research team that included gay men and lesbians who acted as a bridge to their communities, providing credibility and accessibility in a time of crisis. Study researchers allied themselves with gay bar owners to gain access to patrons, placed ads in local LGBTQ publications and networked with gay churches and sports leagues. The message: We can’t fight AIDS without your help.

Marc Wagner, then 22 years old, answered the call, becoming one of the original study participants.

He was an out gay man who was seeing beloved members of his community fall ill. The decision to volunteer was easy, he said.

When he joined the study, an HIV-positive diagnosis was considered a death sentence; there was no treatment, and stigma in the form of housing, jobs and medical discrimination ran rampant against people who contracted HIV and AIDS.

The study’s requirements for volunteers have changed since its inception. Generally, participants are asked to come in every six months to have copious amounts of blood drawn and to answer questionnaires about their health and habits. At times, study participants also submitted urine, fecal and semen samples, provided throat washings with a salt solution, and had their limbs and torso measured to track sub-dermal fat deposits.