Dr. Twigg has a long research interest in pulmonary host defense in HIV infection and has served on many special emphasis panels sponsored by the NHLBI in this area.
Most recently Dr. Twigg has been investigating the lung Microbiome and Virome in healthy subjects and patients with HIV infection, attempting to link the microbial milieu to chronic inflammation and chronic diseases found in the HIV-infected and aging population.
Dr. Twigg is a lung immunologist who has spent his career studying how HIV impairs pulmonary host immunity and leads to pulmonary complications often seen in this patient population. This includes studies on how highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) affects pulmonary HIV viral loads and restores pulmonary immune responses and inflammation towards normal. More recently, he is studying the lung microbiome in HIV infection and in uninfected subjects.
Dr. Twigg's lab has been at the forefront of describing the lung microbiome in both normal subjects and HIV-infected subjects.
His lab is expanding its research focus to the lung virome, hypothesizing that viruses within the microbial milieu of the lung lead to chronic inflammation and some of the common chronic lung conditions like COPD, pulmonary hypertension and cancer, both in HIV-infected and normal subjects.
Keywords:
- Pneumonia in normal and immunocompromised hosts
- HIV infection
- Collagen vascular lung disease
- Pulmonary embolism
