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[Ryo]

Apparantly, Swedish scientists have come so far with a HIV-vaccine, that they are going to test in on persons that hasn't been infected with the virus. They are at the moment searching for appropriate test persons. If everything goes as planned, they start with vaccination in Dar es-Salaam next year.

I'm soooo hoping it works.

more info at this site

..and in English at (link coming(?))

 

[MrparisSM]

Apparantly, Swedish scientists have come so far with a HIV-vaccine, that they are going to test in on persons that hasn't been infected with the virus. They are at the moment searching for appropriate test persons. If everything goes as planned, they start with vaccination in Dar es-Salaam next year.

I'm soooo hoping it works.

more info at this site

..and in English at this site

I don't know if I'm understanding. So they are going to inject someone with something that will appear to be HIV and thus get the immune system in battle mode right?? But I thought HIV actually ATTACKS T-CELLS??? What would be the benefit of this? Also why would they give it to people that already have HIV, their immune system should already be fighting it?

 

[olimario]

I would love to see this work.
If it did, it would be prep for people getting blood transfusions. No more risk!

 

[Ninja Scooter]

i could finally have sex with Magic Johnson! I mean...what?

 

[Ryo]

I don't know if I'm understanding. So they are going to inject someone with something that will appear to be HIV and thus get the immune system in battle mode right?? But I thought HIV actually ATTACKS T-CELLS??? What would be the benefit of this? Also why would they give it to people that already have HIV, their immune system should already be fighting it?

I don't know much about this stuff either, but the vaccine is there to stop the virus from spreading. Those that are allready infected don't benefit from this vaccine AFAIK.

 

[ourumov]

If it works these will be goods indeed...Anyways, I don't think this is the final solution.

 

[maharg]

New HIV vaccine to be tested on humans in Sweden

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 5 March 1996

Ahem. Shouldn't this be in production by now?

 

[Ryo]

Lallala... I think I linked wrong with the English site.. Hmm (gonna look for another link, that one seems to be connected to some other story..)

 

[Ryo]

well well.. there seems to be no English link at the moment. Any swede that like to translate the story from dn.se? I am at work and don't have the time

 

[BobbyRobby]

Not much longer until prostitution will be fun again.

 

[john tv]

i could finally have sex with Magic Johnson! I mean...what?

:lol

 

[aku:jiki]

I'm not gonna translate the whole thing since its pretty poorly written (and even manages to work in a diss on hip-hop, what the fuck?), but some points:

- HIV vaccine testing on healthy humans begins today, Wednesday
- The text describes tests on a mouse, where the vaccine is injected through a small patch of skin close to the base of the spine
- If it works it'll be used in Tanzania as early as next year, at first with 60 african test subjects
- The vaccine contains "microscopic pieces of HIV DNA" that will make your body "produce antibodies without it turning ill" (I'm sorry if this makes no sense, I'm not an M.D.)
- The vaccine is apparently first and foremost designed to handle the HIV strains that are plaguing Africa, so no dreams about sexing up Magic Johnson just yet

 

[Forsete]

Aftonbladet has the story on its frontpage.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/

 

[teiresias]

This isn't the first HIV vaccine to go into testing. There was one tested in the US (I think) a few years ago that didn't turn out to really accomplish anything.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

well there was a story a while back a few years in which there was a supposed vaccine, but it was called a failure cause it only worked in black and asian test subjects.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Some similar information I just had shown to me. Since the English page linked to way above is OLD and the other information is not understandable to my brain and only briefly summarized later on I don't THINK this is the same story, but I'm not positive. The timing and some things sound similar, but others... not so much.

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/97/104268.htm?z=1727_00000_5024_hv_03

The vaccine is made from a patient's own dendritic cells and HIV isolated from the patient's own blood. Dendritic cells are crucial to the immune response. They grab foreign bodies in the blood and present them to other immune cells to trigger powerful immune system responses to destroy the foreign invaders.

HIV infection normally turns these important immune system responses off. But animal studies show that when dendritic cells are "loaded" with whole, killed AIDS viruses, they can trigger effective immune responses that keep infected animals from dying of AIDS.

...

After getting three under-the-skin injections of the tailor-made vaccine, the amount of HIV in the patients' blood (called the viral load) dropped by 80%. After a year, eight of the 18 patients still had a 90% drop in HIV levels. All patients' T-cell counts stopped dropping.

...

The researchers warn that their study is only proof of principle. It's still not clear which patients do best with the vaccine, although there's evidence that vaccination should be given as soon after HIV infection as possible. Only clinical trials comparing people who get the vaccine to those who don't can show whether this vaccine really is an effective AIDS therapy.

Similar approaches are being explored for the treatment of cancer and long-term viral infections such as hepatitis C.

 

[NLB2]

well there was a story a while back a few years in which there was a supposed vaccine, but it was called a failure cause it only worked in black and asian test subjects.

You sure about that?

 

[Arwen]

Some similar information I just had shown to me. Since the English page linked to way above is OLD and the other information is not understandable to my brain and only briefly summarized later on I don't THINK this is the same story, but I'm not positive. The timing and some things sound similar, but others... not so much.

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/97/104268.htm?z=1727_00000_5024_hv_03

After getting three under-the-skin injections of the tailor-made vaccine, the amount of HIV in the patients' blood (called the viral load) dropped by 80%. After a year, eight of the 18 patients still had a 90% drop in HIV levels. All patients' T-cell counts stopped dropping.

Hmm... these results seem a little a optimistic to me. HIV is a retrovirus, so when it infects helper T-cells, it can actually use the host cell's machinery, make a DNA copy of itself and insert into the host genome. So it's expected that the T-cell numbers are going to stop dropping at such a devastating rate and virus levels in the blood are going to drop--the virus has actually become a part of the host DNA and the majority of it cannot be tested for serologically. Of course there will always be a small part of the intial viral load still replicating but not as rapidly because your immune system has not yet deteriorated to the point where it is not capable of fighting the infection. This is the basis of most HIV drugs today--to stop rapid viral replication and prevent the onset of AIDS. I think this tailor made vaccine would be a little more promising if data were available showing a continual drop in the viral load over say 5 to 10 years since 10 to 15 years is about the average time it takes for the onset of AIDS in HIV infected individuals who have received intensive drug therapy.

A possible vaccine I've heard of is made to protect healthy individuals by altering the coat proteins of Rhinovirus to match the ones on HIV therefore exposing the body to what it would experience in an HIV infection without causing the disease.