Carol Dukes Hamilton
Professor Emeritus of Medicine

Dr. Carol Dukes Hamilton is an Infectious Diseases-trained Associate Professor of Medicine, whose research program focus is to optimize strategies to cure and prevent development of tuberculosis (TB). She has a special interest in TB in HIV-infected individuals and her clinical outpatient work is largely comprised of patients with HIV/AIDS. She is actively involved in both clinical trials and epidemiologic studies. She currently has independent research support and has a history of consistent research support over the years from the NHLBI, NIAID, NIEHS, the VA Career Development Program, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Hamilton has taken numerous opportunities to practice medicine and perform clinical research in resource-poor countries. She spent 8-16 week stints in rural Zimbabwe (1987), in urban Tanzania (1989), and as a visiting professor in urban Saudi Arabia (1995). In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, she studied adults presenting to hospital with pericardial effusions, proving that the effusions were caused by TB associated with HIV/AIDS (2). She also helped investigate the microbial etiology of chronic diarrhea in HIV-infected children (3) and also published their experience of seeing increasing and severe cutaneous reactions to common anti-TB medications in patients with underlying HIV infection (4). In 1995, Dr. Hamilton and other VA investigators began a multi-center TB trial of a new drug, rifapentine. The investigator-driven consortium resulting from the rifapentine trial (Study 22) became known as the TB Trials Consortium. The Consortium provided a base from which Dr. Hamilton’s other TB activities have grown. She and a colleague studied disseminated MAC in Duke HIV clinic patients before and after availability of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) (17). In 2001 became the Medical Director of the North Carolina TB Control Program. Her role in the statewide public health management of TB activities enhances her work with other public health-oriented TB specialists in the U.S. and internationally. It also provides outstanding opportunities for epidemiologic and programmatic research for her and her trainees. More recently, Dr. Hamilton has used the State’s TB Control program as the basis for a collaboration with colleagues at the Duke Center for Human Genetics. They successfully competed for an NHLBI R01 to support collection of DNA from North and South Carolina patients who have had proven pulmonary TB. Dr. Hamilton and her genetic epidemiologist collaborator, Dr. William Scott, will use their combined expertise in clinical, molecular, and epidemiological sciences to investigate candidate genes that may contribute to human susceptibility to TB. Dr. Hamilton is currently leading a study of TB diagnostic strategies in Moshi, Tanzania, funded by the NIH ISAAC project.


Key words: Tuberculosis; mycobacteria other than TB (MOTT); HIV/AIDS; HAART; genomics; international health; public health;

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

  • 34226 Hosp South, Durham, NC 27710
  • Duke Box 3306, Durham, NC 27710

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