New vaccine protects monkeys against HIV

[xchrom]

http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/01/04/new-vaccine-protects-monkeys-against-hiv/

A new experimental vaccine shows promise in helping to protect some mammals against contracting the HIV virus, an auto-immune deficiency disease that often leads to AIDS. Scientists have used the vaccine on monkeys with a level of success, and hope to eventually develop the vaccine for human use, ABC News is reporting.

The study published in the medical journal Nature indicates that the vaccine may be capable of preventing the contraction of the HIV virus when exposed to even the most unusual strains. Monkeys who were vaccinated against the SIV virus, the HIV version of the disease found in monkeys, reduced their risk of contracting the disease by 80 percent.

If the monkeys did become infected, the virus was concentrated at a lower level than other monkeys who were not given the vaccine.

The success of the vaccines has been attributed by an element, Env, an antibody capable of destroying the HIV virus.

[Zorra]

1. Let's hope. nt

[beyurslf]

2. Good news.

Interesting to note that the article described HIV as "an auto-immune deficiency disease that often leads to AIDS."

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. Do you consider that statement inaccurate?

[beyurslf]

6. When would HIV not lead to AIDS?

If the person died before that happened from something else? We shouldn't sugar coat what HIV is--a virus with no cure that causes AIDS and death.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

7. AIDS is a specific designation realted to, IIRC, T-cell count.

A person can be HIV positive for years without being designated with AIDS. Long term positive people with low to undetectable viral loads and near normal T-cells don't have aids and may never have aids if the drugs keep working.

[beyurslf]

8. I know what AIDS is. I have not heard any doctor say that a person may never develop AIDS, just

that we don't know the outer limits of medication and treatment anymore. There remains no cure, and it does lead to AIDS.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. I see were you are coming from.

[Fearless]

5. It is.

Not everyone with HIV reaches that stage. Granted it's rare... though less so with current meds. Think Magic Johnson.

[ZombieHorde]

4. Sweet. Time to put monkeys back on my to do list. nt

[dipsydoodle]

10. Always worth going back to the original article.

In this case the original wording was "the virus that causes AIDS in humans" : title has been changed too from " Monkey vaccine hints at how to stop HIV"

Original here :

A vaccine against a monkey virus could offer clues to defeating HIV. Scientists have created a vaccine that protects rhesus monkeys from infection with a potent form of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which is distantly related to the virus that causes AIDS in humans.

SIV vaccines have been successful before, but the protective effects have proved difficult to carry over to HIV. Scientists are hopeful that the latest results, which appear online in Nature today1, can be combined with findings from a modestly successful vaccine trial in humans2 to point the way to an effective HIV vaccine.

“To me, if it’s possible in monkeys it’s got to be possible in humans,” says Bruce Walker, a virologist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study.

Because HIV does not cause disease in monkeys, SIV is the best model for evaluating vaccines before they are tested in humans, says Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the lead author of the latest paper. In the past, SIV vaccines have protected macaque monkeys from only the SIV strains used to make the virus, or from strains that are easy to kill, says Barouch.

http://www.nature.com/news/monkey-vaccine-hints-at-how-to-stop-hiv-1.9738