Trial HIV vaccine cuts infection

AIDES is one of the biggest killers of African people and any news of  progress in ending this scourge is welcome.  Finding vaccine against HIV has been a 'Holy Grail' of medicine for the past 25 years but such a breakthrough has remained frustratingly out of reach.

During 2007 more than two and a half million adults and children became infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the virus that causes AIDS. By the end of the year, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS.

The year also saw two million deaths from AIDS, despite recent improvements in access to antiretroviral treatment; 1.5 million of those deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of people living with HIV has risen from around 8 million in 1990 to 33 million today, and is still growing and  Around 67% of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Overall breakdown for Sub-Saharan Africa:

22.0 million living with HIV/AIDS Adults & children

1.9 million newly infected Adults & children

1.5 million Deaths of adults & children 

Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.

At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.

In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned the development was "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, he said. "This is something that we can do."

Science is rightly excited about the results – a vaccine against HIV has proved so difficult many believe it is impossible to achieve – as this is the first time any vaccine has produced as significant reaction in humans.

This time the scientists are claiming that their new combination of two vaccines, which have failed to produce an effect on their own, can reduce the chance of infection by 30 per cent.

This may not sound like a very effective vaccine but in the struggle against HIV which is an extremely complex virus, it has been hailed as an "historic milestone".

The task now is to find how these vaccines worked and accelerate the research to improve the efficacy to a point where the protective effect is large enough for it to be licensed for use in humans. This is likely to take some years but these results have provided the important first step.

The trial was carried out by the U.S. Military HIV Research Program and the Thai Ministry of Public Health.  Let us hope this vaccine lives up to its potential, completes trials and becomes available sooner than the predicted 10 years from now.  The tested vaccine was tested on the particular strain of the virus common in Thailand.  Early days of  the research and a limited trial but still the first time to demonstrate we may be able to develop a vaccine to reduce the spread of the disease.

Story: Trial HIV vaccine cuts infection

"An experimental HIV vaccine has cut the risk of infection by nearly a third in a major trial, researchers say.  The vaccine - a combination of two earlier experimental vaccines - was given to 16,000 people in a joint trial by the Thai government and US military.  It reduced by 31% the volunteers' risk of contracting HIV, the virus that leads to Aids.

The findings have been described as a significant scientific breakthrough but a worldwide vaccine is some way off.   The study was carried out over seven years on volunteers - HIV-negative men and women aged between 18 and 30 - in some of Thailand's most badly-affected regions.

The vaccine was a combination of two older vaccines that on their own had not cut infection rates.   Half of the volunteers were given the vaccine, while the other half were given a placebo - and all were given counselling on HIV/Aids prevention.

The results found that the chances of catching HIV were 31.2% less for those who had taken the vaccine.  "This result is tantalisingly encouraging. The numbers are small and the difference may have been due to chance, but this finding is the first positive news in the Aids vaccine field for a decade," said Dr Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet medical journal."

Source:  BBC Health

AIDES statistics source: The latest statistics on the world epidemic of HIV and AIDS were published by UNAIDS/WHO in July 2008, and refer to the end of 2007.