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HIV/AIDS Vaccine To Begin Phase I Human Trials
An anonymous reader writes "An HIV/AIDS vaccine developed in Ontario has applied for Phase 1 human trials. Safety and immunogenicity studies of the vaccine, dubbed SAV001-H, have already been completed on animals. Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers. Phase 2 will then test immunogenicity."
Is this a vaccine for the virus, as one with half a brain would assume?
Or is this a magic serum that cures you of AIDS while not dealing with HIV?
HIV/AIDS is stupid.
HIV and AIDS are separate, though related, things.
Think of the confusion:
Person with AIDS gets vaccine and thinks it's okay to have unprotected sex willy-nilly.
If I take the vaccine and I only sleep with my wife and in 10 years I'm HIV free does it work?
Or is one of the pre-requisites of joining the trial that you commit to sleeping with as many sleeezy whores as you can find?
These are the questions that keep me from being a productive member of society.....
No, because parents will refuse to let their children get vaccinated because that would encourage them to have premarital sex.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Phase I is really too early to get any hope up. Most "promising" drugs that enter Phase I don't make it to the end of Phase III (FDA approval).
I assume that depends on the level of immunity it provides. Are we talking Flu Vaccine or Small Pox vaccine level of protection?
Or because they fear it'll cause autism (ala Jenny McCarthy). Combine the two and you have premarital autistic sex! We can't have that! Won't someone think of the children?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If you're dumb enough to contract HIV in any way other than a clinical fuck-up, then frankly, I hope you die, and I hope you never managed to reproduce.
Nice sentiment. Until you find out that your husband/wife was not, in fact, on a hiking trip. Suddenly you need an urgent blood test, despite never having done anything more risky than trusting your spouse.
And, just for the record, you should care because empathy is one of the things that separates you from lower species.
Don't get too excited. A few other promising AIDS vaccines have made it this far. Phase I testing is just testing for safety, not effectiveness. Phase II testing is for effectiveness, and phase III testing is for effectiveness in a larger population. VaxGen's vaccine made it to Phase III before it turned out not to be very effective. 95% of the new drugs that make it to the beginning of testing in humans don't turn out to be useful.
It wouldn't have to be 100% effective to eradicate HIV. Slowing the spread of a disease can be enough to make it (eventually) disappear.
Good plan. The next time an atheist comes to my door to preach at me I'll just tell them to go away. Oh, wait, that never happens.
On the other hand, evangelical religious folk do come to my door and try to convert me or, as has happened int the past, try to convince neighborhood kids to join their church when they think the parents aren't home.
A few points;
1: While you can inject the HIV virus into other animals, the virus will not enter their cells due to the variations between human CD40 and the animals' copy. They can get the virus in them, but it won't do anthing.
2: There are animals whose cell surface ligands are similar enough to the human ones that the virus *does* infect them. if I recall correctly, HIV is capable (though much less efficiently) of entering the cells of certain apes, cats, and armadillos (an eclectic combination to be sure).
3: Of those animals that will play host to the virus, none of them develop symptoms of AIDS. They will host the virus, spread it around, but will not suffer immunoinhibition. This really isn't that uncommon; humans carry several viruses with no measuarble histological effect. This means that there are no suitable animal models for vaccine testing; human testing really is the only viable option.
4:It has long been theorized that the difference between being HIV positive and having AIDS is merely the amount of virus spreading in the system. i.e. if you can keep the viral load low enough, you won't get AIDS. If this is indeed the case, then even a therapeutic vaccine will be a huge step forward in the mortality rates of those infected.
5: Yes, HIV mutates quite quickly. For this reason, the approach that has long been favored is a competitve virus that targets the same cell types as HIV, yet does not have the same level of virulence (a latent infection rather than an actively spreading one). This is the same strategy employed with polio; the original polio vaccine was an actively spreading infectious virus that simply didn't cause the same disease symptoms. It also spread from person to person just like the disease it was meant to treat. This "similar but safer" strategy is likely the only way to have the 'treatment' evolve quickly enough to keep in step with the target. This is also the most difficult type of vaccine for which to acquire testing approval (for obvious reasons).
6: Other vaccine types are much less likely to be effective against a quickly mutating target like HIV. While they may prime the immune system effectively enough against a single strain of the virus, it's much less likely to work against other strains (same reason that you have to get the flu shot every year rather than just once).
7: It was recently shown that HIV can spread through cell:cell junctions. This being the case, it is unlikely that typical vaccines (other than live virus) will be effective, because there is no chance for antibodies (the typical immune system mediator) to interfere in this infection process. Now, it is unlikely that cell:cell spread is sufficient to get viral load to the point of causing AIDS, but it is still a factor to be considered when making predictions about vaccine efficacy (viral clearance is extremely unlikely).
8: This is a phase 1 trial. It's a small scale trial where they're testing for toxicity, not efficacy (phase 2/3). In other words, this trial is designed to answer the question, "is it safe?" It will not answer the question, "does it work?"
Preposterous. I for one trust my husband completely. When he says he's out on a hiking trip, I know he's out hiking the Appalachian trail, not up to mischief. Perhaps you should be more trustful of your spouse instead of worrying about contracting AIDS.
Sincerely,
Jenny Sanford
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
I'm an evangelical agnostic. I'll come to your door for no particular reason.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.