The Herold lab
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Kerry Murphy, MD

Kerry Murphy, MD Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine

Kerry Murphy, MD
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine

Kerry Murphy, MD

Dr. Murphy is a clinically trained Infectious Disease physician with a background in basic science research and more recent experience in translational research committed to the care of HIV-infected women in the Bronx. Her translational research is focused on the impact of host factors including HIV infection, reproductive aging, and genetics on the vaginal microbiome, mucosal immune environment and genital health. She has been awarded several research grants including an Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program (ECRIP) Award, an Einstein-Montefiore Institutional Mentored Clinical and Translational Research Career Development Award and an Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY CFAR Pilot award to investigate the impact of reproductive aging on the vaginal microbiome and genital tract mucosal immunity in the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS). Dr. Murphy was the PI of a recently published cross-sectional study (Murphy et al, Plos One, 2019) which enrolled 141 WIHS participants and demonstrated that postmenopausal compared to premenopausal participants have a suboptimal genital tract mucosal environment and this was most notable in the women living with HIV infection (WLWH). Significant differences in the taxonomic composition of the vaginal microbiome were driven by a significantly higher proportion of BV associated species Gardnerella and Atopobium in the postmenopausal WLWH and higher proportions of L. iners in premenopausal WLWH. Further menopausal WLWH had lower proportions of Lactobacillus species compared to HIV- menopausal women, and older menopausal WLWH (aged 56-70) had more dysbiosis compared to younger menopausal WLWH (45-59). These findings suggest that vaginal dysbiosis may be impacted by both HIV infection and age. Genital tract aging is vastly understudied but the vaginal mucosal aging phenotype of dysbiosis, inflammation, loss of epithelial integrity and vaginal atrophy has enormous consequences for aging women including risk for UTI, STIs and HIV. With the success of ART, women living with HIV infection are now aging, which poses unique clinical and research questions, including how HIV impacts aging of the genital tract and vaginal health and the need to develop of interventions to reverse aging and improve healthspan. Building on this work she will now embark on a cross-sectional study of HIV- and HIV+ menopausal participants to determine if HIV is associated with early and more significant age-associated changes in female genital tract. This will be complemented by a pilot randomized clinical trial to replace vaginal estradiol in HIV+ menopausal women with vaginal atrophy to assess whether estradiol improves symptoms of atrophy, restores a lactobacillus dominant vaginal microbiome and reduces inflammation.

KEY REFERENCES

  1. Murphy K, Keller MJ, Anastos K, Sinclair S, Devlin JC, Shi Q, Hoover DR, Starkman B, McGillick J, Mullis C, Minkoff H, Dominguez-Bello MG, Herold BC. Impact of reproductive aging on the vaginal microbiome and soluble immune mediators in women living with and at-risk for HIV infection. PLoS One. 2019;14(4):e0216049. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216049. eCollection 2019. PubMed PMID: 31026271; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6485713

  2. Murphy K, Mitchell CM. The Interplay of Host Immunity, Environment and the Risk of Bacterial Vaginosis and Associated Reproductive Health Outcomes. J Infect Dis. 2016 Aug 15;214 Suppl 1:S29-35. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiw140. Epub 2016 Apr 7. Review. PubMed PMID: 27056955; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4957509

  3. Murphy K, Richardson BA, Dezzutti CS, Marrazzo J, Hillier SL, Hendrix CW, Herold BC. Levels of Genital Tract Defensins and Cytokines Differ between HIV-Uninfected US and African Women. Am J Reprod Immunol. 2015 Oct;74(4):313-22. doi: 10.1111/aji.12411. Epub 2015 Jun 21. PubMed PMID: 26094732; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4573314