Healthy Life Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Vaccine’

The first vaccine to show any sign of preventing the spread of HIV has provided the most encouragement since the 1990s in the three-decades quest to stem the global AIDS epidemic.

Results of a trial involving more than 16,000 adults in Thailand indicate the vaccine regimen was safe and reduced by 31% the chance of infection with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which helped fund the study.

Though that 31% is modest, it has heartened public-health experts and scientists. It is the first time a vaccine has been shown to confer any HIV protection at all. Should this prove to be a forerunner to a usable vaccine, it would be the second big game-changer in AIDS research since the mid-1990s, when potent new “drug cocktails” — a mix of protease inhibitors and other anti-retrovirals — turned AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic but manageable disease for many patients. – click here to read more from WSJ|Health