Faculty

• University of Washington


• Physical Address:
• 1959 NE Pacific St.
• HSB 1317
• Seattle, WA 98195


• Mailing Address:
• 1959 NE Pacific St.
• Box 359931
• Seattle, WA 98195


• Phone: (206) 744-5130
• Fax: (206) 744-3694


• Email: kitahata@uw.edu

Mari M. Kitahata, MD, MPH

• Professor of Medicine, University of Washington

Dr. Kitahata is Director of the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research Core of the UW Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and the PI of the UW HIV Cohort, a longitudinal observational study of HIV-infected patients who receive primary care in the UW Harborview Medical Center Madison HIV Clinic and the UW Medical Center Virology Clinic from 1995 to the present. She developed the UW HIV Information System (UWHIS) to integrate comprehensive clinical data on the HIV Cohort including demographic, medication, CD4+ T cell count, HIV-1 RNA level, hematologic, viral resistance, diagnoses, and causes of death data, linked to biological specimens to support HIV clinical, epidemiological, and translational research.

Dr. Kitahata's research focuses on clinical outcomes in HIV disease and has elucidated key determinants of increased survival including care managed by physicians with HIV expertise and earlier initiation of antiretroviral treatment. The need for observational research to complement the invaluable information provided by randomized controlled trials has grown tremendously, which is why she established the CFAR Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research program at UW in 1995 and was among the first CFARs in the US to do so. Dr. Kitahata has helped establish networks of national and international HIV research collaborations to address critical questions in HIV treatment and management that can't be addressed through single cohorts or clinical trials..

Dr. Kitahata is the UW PI of the NIAID-funded International Epidemiological Databases to Evaluate AIDS project's North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD) and directs the Data Management Core that merges data on 110,000 HIV-infected individuals in care at 60 sites across the US and Canada. Dr. Kitahata is the UW PI of the CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) project and directs the CNICS Data Core, which designed and built the CNICS Data Repository housed at UW, that currently integrates comprehensive data on 21,000 patients from eight CFAR sites (UW, UAB, CWRU, UCSD, UCSF-GIVI, Harvard/Fenway, Johns Hopkins, UNC).

Selected Publications

Kitahata MM, Gange SJ, Abraham AG, et al. Effect of Early versus Deferred Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV on Survival. N Engl J Med. 2009;360:1815-26.
[ PubMed Abstract ]

Kitahata MM, Rodriguez B, Haubrich R, et al. Cohort profile: the Centers for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems. IInt J Epidemiol. 2008 Oct;37(5):948-55.
[ PubMed Abstract ]

Deeks SG, Gange SJ, Kitahata MM, et al. Trends in multidrug treatment failure and subsequent mortality among antiretroviral therapy-experienced patients with HIV infection in North America. Clin Infect Dis. 2009 Nov 15;49(10):1582-90.
[ PubMed Abstract ]

Kitahata MM, Koepsell TD, Deyo RA, et al. Physicians' experience with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome as a factor in patients' survival. N Engl J Med 1996;334:701-6.
[ PubMed Abstract ]

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