ArticleJournal of medical ethics2023
Lessons learned from the Last Gift study: ethical and practical challenges faced while conducting HIV cure-related research at the end of life.
Article in Journal of medical ethics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ethical frameworks and community engagement in HIV cure-related research at the end of life: looking back, moving forward.Current opinion in HIV and AIDS · 2026Article
- Intersectionality-Informed HIV Cure-Related Research at the End of Life: A Call to Action.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Relationship Between Opioid Use, Depression, and Quality of Life Among Persons With HIV at End of Life.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2025Article
- Integrating socio-behavioral, ethics, community, and translational science considerations in HIV cure research.Current opinion in HIV and AIDS · 2025Review
- Motivations, acceptability and ethical considerations for interventional HIV cure research at the end of life: perspectives from long-term survivors of HIV in the United States.BMC medical ethics · 2025Article
- "Sometimes They Exclude Us because of Our Age-That's Not Right": Perceptions of HIV Cure Research Among Diverse Long-Term Survivors in the United States.AIDS research and human retroviruses · 2025Article
- "This Is How I Give Back": Long-Term Survivors on Legacy and HIV Cure Research at the End of Life-A Qualitative Inquiry in the United States.Infectious disease reports · 2025Article
- Description and Analysis of Research on Death and Dying during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Published in Nursing Journals Indexed in SCOPUS.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2024Article
- Article
- Perceived risks and benefits of enrolling people with HIV at the end of life in cure research in Southern California, United States.Journal of virus eradication · 2023Article
- A Community-Driven Framework to Prioritize the Use of Donated Human Biological Materials in the Context of HIV Cure-Related Research at the End of Life.Pathogens & immunity · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The Last Gift is an observational HIV cure-related research study conducted with people with HIV at the end of life (EOL) at the University of California San Diego. Participants agree to voluntarily donate blood and other biospecimens while living and their bodies for a rapid research autopsy postmortem to better understand HIV reservoir dynamics throughout the entire body. The Last Gift study was initiated in 2017. Since then, 30 volunteers were enrolled who are either (1) terminally ill with a concomitant condition and have a prognosis of 6 months or less or (2) chronically ill with multiple comorbidities and nearing the EOL.Multiple ethical and logistical challenges have been revealed during this time; here, we share our lessons learnt and ethical analysis. Issues relevant to healthcare research include surrogate informed consent, personal and professional boundaries, challenges posed conducting research in a pandemic, and clinician burnout and emotional support. Issues more specific to EOL and postmortem research include dual roles of clinical care and research teams, communication between research personnel and clinical teams, legally required versus rapid research autopsy, identification of next of kin/loved ones and issues of inclusion. Issues specific to the Last Gift include logistics of body donation and rapid research autopsy, and disposition of the body as a study benefit.We recommend EOL research teams to have clear provisions around surrogate informed consent, rotate personnel to maintain boundaries, limit direct contact with staff associated with clinical care and have a clear plan for legally required versus research autopsies, among other recommendations.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.