All right, it’s a sensationalistic headline, but this is pretty sensational news.
A collaboration between the US Military HIV Research Program and the Thai Ministry of Public Health announced that for the first time, a vaccine against HIV has actually been shown decrease your chances of catching HIV.
The trial, which gave about 8,200 people an experimental HIV vaccine called RV144 and 8,200 people a placebo, showed that the vaccine decreased the rate of HIV by about 30%. While the ideal vaccine would have a much higher success rate, this is an important milestone.
Many questions remain to be answered—will the vaccine work as well against HIV strains in Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world as it did against the strain in Thailand? Will it work against HIV transmitted by injection drug use, which delivers a much higher virus load than sex? Was this just a fluke?
Here’s the link to the press report from the US Military, and here’s a link to a good article from the LA Times.
Gregg A. Miller
Gregg Miller, MD is a board-certified emergency room physician. Not nearly as good-looking as the doctors on the TV show ER, lacking the charisma of Dr. House, and much less scandalous than anyone on Grey’s Anatomy, he still managed to carve out a niche ...
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p says:
AIDS has already been cured (in the industrialized world) by HAART. HIV has not.