Vaccine hits super snag - HIV Digest - Brief Article

Men's Fitness, Nov, 2002

An AIDS vaccine may not be possible, according to a report presented at the 14th International Conference on AIDS in Barcelona. Harvard Medical School researchers cited the case of an HIV-positive patient who acquired a "superinfection." This was discovered during a study on treatment interruptions, in which patients took "drug vacations" to allow their immune systems to detect and then fight the resurgent virus. One subject was doing well until he contracted a second strain of HIV from the same class, but with a 12 percent variation from his original infection.

"He never got a new [immune] response to the second virus, and he declined quickly," said lead investigator Bruce Walker, M.D. "The implication is that it's possible to be infected with a second strain of HIV, even a very closely related one."

The case was called "shattering" to the prospect of developing an effective vaccine. If a patient's immune system cannot protect him against a second virus from the same class, a protective vaccine would likely have to contain thousands of viral samples rather than just those from the seven or eight major classes of HIV. Such a vaccine would be unfeasible to test, manufacture or tolerate.

CONDOM COMEBACKS

What to say when your partner doesn't want to use protection

The excuse: "If you loved me, you'd let me."

The response: "If you loved me, you'd never let me."