New Lead for Effective HIV Vaccine

Added by David Sandercock on November 8, 2010

US researchers stated on Thursday that studies revealed a possibility that answers why only some people resist the AIDS virus.

Researchers said that there are small differences in 5 amino-acids in the HLA-B protein that may explain this incidence and that may help to discover an effective HIV vaccine.

Dr. Brice Walker from the Harvard University and Massachusetts’ General Hospital stated that differences between different patients’ reaction to the virus have been seen for a long time. “For a long time, we’ve known that some people progress extremely rapidly when they get infected, and others can stay well for three decades and never need treatment and still look entirely well.

We thought we could apply new techniques from the human genome project to understand what the genetic basis was for that,” said Dr. Walker.

Nearly 1 in 300 people who are infected with HIV don’t develop the disease because their immune system manages to keep the virus at very low levels.

The team of US researchers looked into the genetic makeup of 1,000 people who has this immune-suppression when infected with the virus and compared it to that of 2,600 people also infected with HIV.