Vaccine for prevention of HIV discovered
FOR the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the HIV virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.
The vaccine cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 per cent in the world’s largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced on Thursday in Bangkok.
Even though the benefit is modest, “it’s the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine,” Col. Jerome Kim said in a telephone interview. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The institute’s director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is “not the end of the road,” but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.
“It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said in a telephone interview.
Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; two million died of AIDS in 2007, the U.N. agency, UNAIDS, had revealed.
“Today marks an historic milestone,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine.
“It will take time and resources to fully analyse and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energise and redirect the AIDS vaccine field,” he said in a statement.
The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.
“This is a scientific breakthrough,” Thai Health Minister, Witthaya Kaewparadai, told a news conference in Bangkok. “For the first time ever, there is evidence that HIV vaccine has preventative efficacy.”
The study actually tested a two-vaccine combo in a “prime-boost” approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.
They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.
Meanwhile, in his reaction, Mr. Tunji Agboola, Chairman, Civil Society HIV/AIDS Network in Nigeria (CiSHAN ), Oyo State, explained that the HIV vaccine was what many people had been looking forward to. Though he acknowledged that scientists were not yet on top of the problem, he said the report that the vaccine had 31 per cent cure rate was heart-warming, considering that for a long time, not much had been recorded on a possible solution to the problem.
Mr. Agboola, however, cautioned that people should not relax in the steps they had been taking to protect themselves from the virus, as the finding was not saying a cure had been found for HIV.
In his response, Professor Oladapo Ladipo, President, Association for Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH), Ibadan, a non-governmental organisation, said the new discovery was a big step forward in finding a lasting solution to HIV.
He said, the finding was especially important, because for a long time, it had been difficult finding any vaccine that was effective, because the virus had continued to change and there were different types of the virus in circulation.
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