Promising Steps Toward AIDS Vaccine

AIDS was first detected in the early 80’s and since then, 25 million people have died from it; that is the equivalent of the population of Texas. Yesterday, news broke that there has been a medical breakthrough in the AIDS/HIV epidemic. News that gives hope that one day there may be a vaccine to stop this disease. After over 20 years of trials, a new vaccine in Thailand has been produced and has been proven to reduce the risk of HIV infection by 31%. Two old trial vaccines were combined to make this new vaccine. Usually, for a vaccine to be considered a success (like the chicken pox vaccine) it has to be 75% effective. So of course there is much more research needed due to the complexities of this disease, but this is a huge leap in the right direction to finding a cure.

The trial was sponsored by the U.S. government and conducted by the Thai Ministry of Public Health. It cut the risk of infection by 31.2% among 16,402 volunteers over three years. The results were that new infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given the vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. These results are viewed as modest, but they are giving the hope that there might be a vaccine in sight down the road.

When AIDS first became a global crisis, no one believed that there could be a treatment, it was viewed as imminent death. Over the course of the past several decades, treatment has been developed and improved drastically. In the past, treatments consisted of drug “cocktails” containing numerous pills with horrible side effects, but science has progressed and patients can now take one pill a day. For example one such daily pill is called Atripla. This pill greatly simplifies treatment for HIV patients; 10 years ago patients took as many as 25 pills a day. This leap from 25 pills to 1 efficient pill daily suggests to me that there is great hope for finding a vaccine as science progresses forward, looking at both the treatment and cure.

It is estimated that around 33 million people are currently infected with HIV worldwide, with an additional 7,500 infected daily; with such an epidemic on our hands, I hope that our government, as well as the world in general, contribute to the research for this much needed vaccine. For further information on AIDS research and donating opportunities go to http://www.amfar.org/.