How Do HIV Vaccines Work?Before discussing about how do HIV vaccines work?, it would be important to know what vaccine is. A vaccine is a medical product made to stimulate the immune system of the body for preventing or controlling the infections. A preventive vaccine trains your immune system to fight a particular microorganism. As a result of this, that particular microorganism cannot establish itself in your body. Vaccines of HIV are being developed. As well as they are at different clinical trials. However, at present none of them has verified its effectiveness.
Importance of the research on HIV vaccine It is essential to conduct a research to find out an effective vaccine. It would help to interrupt the spread of HIV. What is the difference between a therapeutic HIV vaccine and preventive HIV vaccine? Therapeutic HIV vaccines are devised for controlling HIV infection in people who are already HIV positive. Preventive vaccines are devised to defend HIV negative people from becoming infected. However, at present, there is no vaccine to prevent HIV; researchers are doing their best for developing a vaccine that can protect people from HIV infection. How Do HIV Vaccines Work? When a body of an individual comes across with a microorganism, immune system attacks on it in order to protect the body. It defeats that microorganism. The immune system consistently remembers that how to beat that microorganism if it again attacks your body. A vaccine is designed to be similar to a real microorganism. It trains the immune system to identify and assault the microorganism should you ever come across with it. If a person gets an effective vaccine, his/her immune system will remember and fight the microorganism for several years. Since 1987, more than thirty HIV candidate vaccines have been tested. These vaccines have been tested on ten thousand healthy volunteers. Most of the trials on vaccine have been carried out in United States and Europe. However, many of them have been carried out in the developing countries like, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, China Kenya, Peru, Thailand, Trinidad, and Uganda. The results of these vaccines are effective and confirmed the safety. Moreover, they have furnished the vital scientific information that can be used for further development of candidate vaccines. The vaccines with better ability can be designed with the help of this scientific information to stimulate anti-HIV specific immune response. Currently, there are only two candidate vaccines being assessed in Phase III efficacy trials. The first trial began in 1998 in the United States. 54,000 volunteers were enrolled at that time. Those were mostly homosexual men. The trail is estimating the effectiveness of an envelope gp120 candidate vaccine based on the HIV subtype circulating in North America. Information about cost Approximately US$ 500 million have been invested on HIV vaccines research that includes industry and research agencies in the industrialized countries. A very small amount has been delivered for developing vaccines for the developing countries. However, the amount is not sufficient to carry out the simultaneous development of multiple vaccine products. The amount should be increased for conducting the trials for the vaccines. The research is being conducted on HIV vaccines for preventing the infection of HIV. However, till any concrete results cannot be seen. |
