Ellen Yeung, PhD

Current HIV/AIDS-Related Research Activities:

• Understanding the shared risk and resilience factors underlying addiction and chronic pain, and the mechanisms linking the two. 
• Using a lifespan developmental perspective to examine the influences of genetics, social environment, and their interplay on the pathologies of addiction and pain; sensitivity to pain among individuals with addiction; susceptibility to addiction among patients with chronic pain; and the biopsychosocial pathways that may account for the reciprocal relation between addiction and chronic pain. 
• Extending current research to understand the role of addiction-pain comorbidity among people living with HIV/AIDS (e.g. how the co-morbidity of addiction and pain influence the compliance of medication and HIV/AIDS-specific health maintenance, the unique physiological mechanisms underlying addiction-pain co-morbidity among PLWHA using laboratory paradigms).