Your Health

Advances Against AIDS

Posted 7/22/2010

To learn more about HIV vaccine research in the United States, visit http://bethegeneration.nih.gov.

(NAPSI)-Scientists continue to make progress in the quest for a safe and effective vaccine to prevent HIV/AIDS. Such progress would not have been possible without the help of tens of thousands of volunteers from all corners of the globe who have literally rolled up their sleeves to become clinical trial volunteers in support of HIV vaccine research.

The need for a vaccine remains critical. An estimated 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some 56,300 individuals in the United States become newly infected every year. African-Americans account for almost half of these new infections, Hispanics for 18 percent.

While advancements in anti-retroviral drug therapies are prolonging the lives of HIV/AIDS patients, such drugs are not a cure and must be taken for a lifetime, making the discovery of an HIV vaccine our best hope for ending the spread of the virus.

In 2009, HIV prevention research received positive news when a 16,000-person vaccine trial in Thailand showed a vaccine regimen was modestly effective in protecting some of the trial participants from contracting HIV. While this vaccine is not considered effective enough for licensure, the data gleaned from the multiyear trial has been invaluable, illuminating the path toward future discoveries in HIV vaccine research.

HIV vaccine candidates do not contain the HIV virus, so they cannot infect trial volunteers. HIV vaccine trials are monitored not only by scientists and researchers, but also by community advisory boards made up of local prevention experts and regular citizens who ensure that the safety and well-being of study participants is always the top priority.

Historically, the development of vaccines has taken decades. It took scientists 42 years to develop a measles vaccine and 47 years to develop one for polio; the typhoid vaccine required more than a century of research and testing. Today, those vaccines are protecting and saving millions of lives around the world.

These lifesaving vaccines would not be part of standard preventative medicine today without the commitment of those volunteers who willingly participated in the research. Volunteers join clinical trials for a variety of reasons. D.C. native Kymone Freeman, an HIV vaccine trial volunteer, poet and playwright, says he has became involved in HIV prevention since his uncle died of AIDS. "Our only hope of truly curbing this pandemic is the discovery of a vaccine. That is why I fight."