Huge Breakthrough In HIV Research Brings Us Closer To A Vaccine

[UrbScotty]

Source: Think Progress

A team of Spanish researchers say they have made an important breakthrough in HIV research, developing a new vaccine against the virus that is significantly more effective than earlier attempts. Advancing vaccine research could eventually eliminate the need for the expensive methods currently used to treat HIV-positive individuals.

Researchers tested the vaccine on randomly selected HIV-positive individuals who were already taking highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) medications, the most scientifically advanced form of treatment currently available to combat the virus. They wanted to see if, rather than simply suppressing the effects of the virus with outside treatment, their vaccine could lead the human immune system to coordinate its own defense against HIV — and they succeeded, seeing some subjects’ HIV viral loads drop more than 90 percent after 12 weeks of the trial:

“What we did was give instructions to the immune system so it could learn to destroy the virus, which it does not do naturally,” said Felipe Garcia, one of the scientists in the team at Barcelona University’s Hospital Clinic.

The therapeutic vaccine, a shot that treats an existing disease rather than preventing it, was safe and led to a dramatic drop in the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients, said the study, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/04/1398631/hiv-vaccine-breakthrough/?mobile=nc

[closeupready]

1. Very encouraging news.

K&R

[pinto]

2. Small trial but interesting approach and encouraging results.

[sdfernando]

3. This is awesome news if it pans out.

But there have been so many disappointments along this road that I will keep a wait and see attitude.

[LeftofObama]

5. I'm with you.

It's great news and I hope like hell it works, but I'll take a wait and see attitude. I'm tired of being disappointed.

[Yo_Mama]

6. The results were in 12 of 22 only, and it was temporary

The vaccine lost its effectiveness after a year, when the patients had to return to their regular combination therapy of anti-retroviral drugs.

But as a vaccine, not a treatment for HIV patients, surely this has to be very encouraging. No vaccine is 100% effective, and the implication is that maybe 50 or 60% of patients might gain the real ability to fight off initial infection.

[LynneSin]

4. Just think if Reagan had properly funded AIDs research decades ago

I'm happy we are closer to a vaccine but it should have never gotten this bad.

[Politicub]

7. Science and research matters.

Imagine if the vaccine is refined and made available. We could see massive drops in HIV infections around the world.