Barcelona: Big breakthrough in HIV research

A team of scientists at Barcelona University’s Hospital Clinic report significant progress in a possible HIV vaccine that would help those already infected by the virus:

“What we did was give instructions to the immune system so it could learn to destroy the virus, which it does not do naturally,” said Felipe Garcia, one of the scientists in the team at Barcelona University’s Hospital Clinic.

The therapeutic vaccine, a shot that treats an existing disease rather than preventing it, was safe and led to a dramatic drop in the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients, said the study, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine. [...]

The vaccine allowed patients temporarily to live without taking multiple medicines on a daily basis, which created hardship for patients, could have toxic side-effects over the long term and had a high financial price, the team said.

“This investigation opens the path to additional studies with the final goal of achieving a functional cure — the control of HIV replication for long periods or an entire life without anti-retroviral treatment,” the researchers said in a statement.

The team did find that the vaccine became less effective after a year and patients had to go back to their previous medications. However, each discovery leads to the next, and the scientists say they plan to continue working along this line of treatment for several more years.

(source)