Brighton academics join global research project

ProSPeRo, the Project on Sexually Transmitted Infection Point-of-care Testing established by the Reproductive Health and Research Department of World Health Organization, aims to evaluate and implement low-cost point-of-care tests (POCTs).

The university is part of a global team of researchers from countries around the world including Australia, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Morocco, Peru, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Uganda, Ukraine.

The news coincides with World AIDS Day which focuses on the fight against HIV and support for people living with HIV.

Professor Nigel Sherriff, the university’s Professor of Public Health and Public Promotion, said: “We are involved in a strand of research studies in Italy, Malta, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Uganda, and here in the UK to conduct a clinic-based evaluation of STI POCTs.

“We are recruiting men who have sex with men (MSM) who present at the Sexual Health and Contraception Service (SHAC), based at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Professor Nigel Sherriff

“Specifically, we are looking at POCT duo tests that can test for HIV and syphilis at the same time among MSM attending the clinic, and then seeing how well these tests compare to gold-standard reference testing"

“We are pooling our data with data from around the world to generate the largest ever data set on this issue to ultimately validate the use of these tests which can be particularly useful in resources-poor settings for identifying new infections without the need for expensive laboratory confirmation testing.”

Working with Professor Sherriff from the University of Brighton are Professor Jörg Huber, the university’s Professor of Health Sciences, and Dr Alexandra Sawyer, a Research Fellow in the university’s School of Health Sciences. Key collaborators include the staff of the Elton John Centre, Brighton and Sussex University NHS Hospitals Trust, and Jaime Vera from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School.