The new HIV vaccine has proven to be effective and safe. The cure for HIV, the latest developments of our scientists

HIV infection has become one of the most important problems in modern world. Since the outbreak began in 1980, 71 million cases have been recorded. The most widespread human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has received in South Africa, where the number of patients is about 7 million people. According to statistics, there are about 1 million HIV-infected patients in Russia. Of them antiviral treatment receive only 110 thousand people. The number of patients is increasing by 10% annually.

Scientists from the advanced countries of the world are working on the creation of an AIDS vaccine. When will there be an HIV vaccine? Why is there still no vaccine for AIDS? Let's try to understand these difficult questions.

Western development of HIV vaccines

Decision on state program to create a vaccine against HIV infection was adopted in the United States and Russia in 1997. All over the world offered different ways developing a drug for HIV.

What developments are currently underway? The news on the HIV vaccine in the world is as follows.

All of these studies have not yet reached the stage of vaccine production. However, tests are actively conducted on volunteers and give nice results. But clinical stage requires years of research. The production of an HIV vaccine is only a matter of time. Even after successful research, scientists achieve long-term effectiveness in most people. And this takes a lot of time.

Russian AIDS Vaccine Developments

In Russia, there is also the prospect of creating vaccines against HIV. At present, the tests have not yet reached the full-scale stage. In St. Petersburg, on the basis of the biomedical center, together with the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Gos. Research Institute of OChB” created a DNA-4 vaccine against HIV. In addition to it, 2 more HIV vaccines were created in Novosibirsk and Moscow.

The development of the St. Petersburg vaccination is led by Professor A. Kozlov, Doctor of Biological Sciences. He is also the director of the biomedical center. Scientists of the Polytechnic University under the leadership of A. Kozlov continue to develop a vaccine against HIV infection using the funds won by a grant to study the immunodeficiency virus. To date, they have carried out 2 stages clinical trials on volunteers. Ahead of the third large-scale stage of research. Once the trials are completed, the vaccine will be presented to everyone at the global level. The release of the vaccine is planned for 2030.

First stage clinical trials of DNA-4 vaccine

All three Russian vaccines passed the first stage of testing. St. Petersburg research preventive vaccine was conducted in 2010 on volunteers who were not infected with HIV. The experiment included 21 people of both sexes. They were divided into 3 groups, each of which received the same dose of vaccine - 0.25, 0.5 or 1 ml.

Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions were drawn.

1. The vaccine showed no side effects. It is safe, non-toxic.
2. In response to the introduction minimum dose of the drug in 100%, the response of the immune system was received.
3. The virus is detected in the blood immediately after infection, and not after a few weeks. If treatment is started at this time specific drugs, HIV infection does not develop. This information is of value to healthcare workers after an accidental cut with a contaminated instrument.
4. During the study, it was observed that some people did not become infected after unprotected contact with HIV-infected people.

It was noted that infection did not occur also after constant contact with one infected partner. According to scientists, these people had previously had an infection similar to AIDS, as a result of which cross-immunity developed. There is another version, according to which 5% of Europeans are genetically protected from the immunodeficiency virus.

Second stage DNA-4 vaccine trials

The second phase of clinical trials of the St. Petersburg vaccine preparation was started in 2014 and completed in 2015. The trial was a therapeutic version of the HIV vaccine, so patients with AIDS were recruited for the experiment. Groups of volunteers formed AIDS treatment centers from 6 Russian cities. The trials involved 54 HIV-infected volunteers who received specific antiviral drugs from 6 months to 2 years. The vaccine is designed to fight the virus subtype A, common in Russia.

At this stage, double-blind randomized controlled trials were conducted. Sick volunteers were randomly divided into three groups. Members of one group were injected with 0.5 ml, and the second - 1 ml of the substance. The third group received a placebo saline. Neither the subjects nor the doctors knew which group received how many vaccines. Only one of the scientists who conducted the experiment knew about this information.

The test results showed the following preliminary conclusions.

1. HIV-infected patients tolerate the vaccine well.
2. The immune response is given by the minimum dose.
3. At infected people it is possible to achieve a reduction in viruses to such an extent that it begins to cope with them the immune system person.

The name of the DNA-4 vaccine means that it contains 4 virus genomes. Although this coverage of the genome is sufficient, scientists are going further - they are developing a DNA-5 vaccine preparation.

Preliminary studies of the vaccine after two stages of the study allow us to conclude that it belongs to group 5 on the safety scale. It does not contain an infectious agent, so the ampoules can be destroyed in the usual way. It induces immunity even after the minimum dose, so there is a possibility of a decrease in the amount of the administered substance.

What are the difficulties in developing an HIV vaccine?

Project leader Professor A. Kozlov reports on the difficulties that arise all over the world when trying to create a vaccine against HIV infection. The main problem is the excessively rapid mutation of the HIV virus. It has several dozen subtypes, within which big changes also take place.

In America and Africa, type B virus is common, and in Russia, Belarus - type A. Moreover, the virus common in Russia is characterized by a mutation to a lesser extent than the American subtype B. But in general, subtype A has already seen a tendency to accelerate mutation. And this means that over time it will be necessary to create new vaccines against HIV infection with different strains. It creates additional problems in the development of vaccines.

There is another obstacle in the development of vaccines - this is the immune response of the individual to the introduction of the vaccine. The uniqueness of the human body does not make it possible to predict how the vaccine preparation will behave in each individual case. At different people the same substance causes not the same type of reaction. But scientists are trying to achieve an average effectiveness of the vaccine.

In Russia, the stumbling block for creating an HIV vaccine is the lack of federal program and proper funding. These and many other factors explain why there are still no vaccines for HIV.

Latest news on vaccine trials in Africa

The latest news about the HIV vaccine comes from Africa. At the end of 2016, large-scale trials of the new vaccine began in 15 regions of South Africa. They cover about 6 thousand people aged 18 to 35 years. Participants are randomly distributed into 2 groups. During the year, volunteers of one group are given 5 injections of the vaccine preparation, and the other - a placebo (saline) according to the same scheme. Thus, a controlled study is provided. All vaccinated persons are sent to medical institutions to monitor and provide necessary assistance.

Research is adapted to the type of virus that is common there. Tests are based on a substance that, after testing in Thailand in 2009, showed 31% efficiency. National Institute infectious diseases The United States, led by its director Anthony Fauci, has high hopes for a new vaccine. The results of the study will be completed in 2020. Scientists believe that the vaccine, even with minimal effectiveness, can reduce the spread of infection. After all, clinical trials are taking place in countries where 1,000 people become infected every day.

Cloned antibodies against HIV infection

Comforting news about the HIV vaccine came from scientists in America and Germany. In 2015, an antibody-based vaccine was successfully tested at New York University. With their help, scientists were able to suppress the development of HIV infection.

A neutralizing antibody codenamed 3BNC117 is produced in the blood in only 1% of HIV-infected patients. In such people, when infected, the infection does not develop, but is cured. Scientists cloned this antibody and introduced it into the blood of other patients. Neutralizing antibodies are able to stop the development of infection - they can protect against 195 out of 237 strains of the virus. In some volunteers, the concentration of the HIV virus decreased by 8 times. This inspired the participants in the experiment and scientists. But with further research, it turned out that the vaccine did not give any result in some of the subjects. In addition, the confrontation does not last long due to the rapid viral mutation.

One of the authors of the project, Florian Klein, noted that the results are encouraging. Despite the fact that the effect is still short-lived, scientists plan to create another type of antibody that can be combined with the first. This will extend the effectiveness of the HIV vaccine by 1 year. The implementation of the project will take a lot of time and will cost the patients dearly.

Another group of scientists led by Michel Nussenzweig in 2016 used antibodies to HIV-infected patients after they stopped taking antiretroviral drugs. The concentration of the virus in the blood was kept at a low level 2 times longer than usual - protection lasted 2 months.

Are HIV-infected people vaccinated?

In patients with HIV infection, the immune system is weakened by this virus. Any vaccinations for a while also weaken defensive forces organism. The question naturally arises - is it possible to do routine vaccinations for HIV infection? Not all vaccinations are dangerous for infected patients. Vaccines are divided into live and inactivated (killed or weakened). After the introduction of a live drug, a person suffers light form diseases, after which immunity is developed. This vaccine is dangerous for HIV patients. But there are inactivated vaccines, after which a person does not get sick.

For the infected HIV people much great danger represents infection. Weakened immunity will not give the opportunity to cope with it. Therefore, infected people need to be vaccinated against the following diseases.

1. People are vaccinated against influenza before the peak of the seasonal epidemic.
2. Vaccination against measles, rubella and mumps healthy people once in a lifetime. But in infected people this live vaccine do not always - first check the level of immune status. Permissible level should be at least 200 cells per 1 ml.
3. Hepatitis vaccine - HIV-infected people need it. Vaccination against virus A protects a person for 20 years, against hepatitis B - for 10 years.
4. People with HIV need the pneumonia vaccine because they are 100 times more likely to be infected than healthy people. After all, in the case of disease, the disease ends lethal outcome. The vaccine protects people for 5 years.
5. From diphtheria and tetanus after vaccination in childhood revaccination is done every 10 years. But for HIV-infected patients, it is done under the control of the level of immunity.

Patients with HIV infection are vaccinated at the AIDS Center under the supervision of doctors. 2 weeks before vaccination, they are given a course of vitamin therapy to support immunity. Some vaccinations for these patients are mandatory.

Let's sum up, recall the main points about the development of a vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus. All countries of the world are involved in the development of an HIV vaccine. Various ways of creating a vaccine preparation are proposed. Russia continues three vaccines. Scientists in Germany and the US have tested cloned antibodies against HIV. Large-scale vaccine trials are currently underway in Africa on 6,000 volunteers. On the way to create drugs, scientists encounter various problems associated with virus mutation, immune response. Despite this, some progress has already been made in vaccination in 15 regions of South Africa. The results of the research will be known in 2020.

Antiretroviral therapy is a treatment that can significantly prolong the life of an HIV-infected person. But these drugs are expensive and have severe side effects. Therefore, researchers do not stop trying to find a new cure for HIV, which can once and for all reduce the number of viral particles in the body of an infected person. And just recently, at a conference in Australia on retroviruses and associated infections, a sensational announcement was made!

Has a new cure for HIV infection been found?

A group of Catalan scientists managed to achieve good results in the fight against HIV through using a special vaccine created at Oxford University. The study involved 15 volunteers. Each of them received four vaccinations. The first vaccine is for HIV, the other three are doses of romidepsin, an anti-cancer drug that can awaken inactive viruses outside the bloodstream.

Why awaken dormant viruses outside of the bloodstream? The fact is that the cure for HIV 2017 actively fights only those viruses that are in the blood. Viruses scattered throughout the tissues of the body, it may not affect if they are not previously activated.

This combination of vaccines showed good results. Finding traces of the human immunodeficiency virus in the blood of 5 out of 15 subjects has not been possible for 7 to 30 weeks (). Despite the fact that volunteers refused to take antiretroviral drugs. This gives hope that the cure for HIV 2017 will soon be in the hands of scientists.

The combined use of vaccination and specific drugs that can neutralize latent cells of the virus gives hope for advances in the development of a working treatment for HIV infection, - Beatriz Mothe, author of the presentation of the IrsiCaixa-HIVACAT method, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol at a conference in Australia

But scientists still have to improve their methodology, because 100% of the result from HIV medicine February 2017 still did not show. Listen to the original recording of the presentation (on English language) you can follow the link.

For expert opinions on new treatments, check out this YouTube video:

Mice cured of HIV?

Article about another potentially effective method treatment for HIV was published Jan. 18 in Science Translational Medicine. American scientists from Rockefeller University decided to test a new 2017 HIV drug on mice. To do this, the rodents were subjected to certain modifications to make their immune system similar to the human.

The immunodeficiency virus infects a cell of the human immune system. Photo © Wikimedia Commons

The mice were then infected with the human immunodeficiency virus and then treated with three types of antibodies. The antibodies used in the study were produced by the immune system of one patient who had collaborated with Rockefeller University for 10 years.

What do antibodies and a new drug for HIV infection 2017? Scientists explain that in infected people, the immune system produces antibodies, the task of which is to detect the virus and neutralize it. But because HIV has a high mutation rate, antibodies cannot effectively deal with it. After all, antibodies are not produced immediately, but after months or years.

Do you know, ? It is important!

AIDS virus. Photo NIAID, CC BY

For 10 years, the researchers managed to identify three types of antibodies at once, which were sent for the treatment of infected rodents. What was the surprise of the researchers when the virus began to lose and after the end of the study, most of the test subjects had no virus in their blood! The authors of the study are convinced that after certain modifications, this approach can be applied to humans.

These are the latest news about the cure for HIV 2017. What do you think about this? Do you believe that scientists are close to a grand breakthrough in medicine? Voice your opinion in the comments and be sure to share this article with your friends. And also read - it's good to know!

Spanish scientists may have advanced in the search for an HIV vaccine that helps the immune system fight the virus.

Study leader Beatriz Mothe believes that new therapy can help many HIV-infected people and at the same time reduce the cost of treatment.

Patient work began three years ago at the Spanish Institute for the Study of AIDS (IrsiCaixa), Barcelona, ​​under the direction of Beatriz Mot. The researchers used a drug developed by Professor Thomas Hanke of the University of Oxford in the UK.

According to Science News, 13 volunteers who were diagnosed with the infection shortly before the start of the study received two Hanke vaccines.

After vaccination, volunteers were given a course of 3 doses of romidepsin (romidepsin), anticancer drug, known for its ability to “suppress” HIV in the cells in which it “hides”. At the end of the course of romidepsin, the subjects stopped taking regular antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, — traditional therapy against HIV.

The subjects were regularly examined to determine when their body, under the influence of vaccines, would develop a stable immune response. Patients received an average of 3.2 years of antiviral drugs.

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 is notorious for its high rate of mutation - because of this, it manages to evade the body's adaptive immune response.

Four weeks later, eight patients returned the virus, but the rest gained control of the virus for 6 to 28 weeks, respectively (to date, one of the volunteers has been off ART for 7 months).

HIV was still detected in their bodies, but the viral load did not exceed 2000 copies per cubic millimeter, that is, it was below the threshold for resuming antiretroviral therapy.

Staff at the Institute for the Study of AIDS (IrsiCaixa), Barcelona

Beatrice Mot said that it was possible to strengthen the immune system and it is able to effectively respond to attempts by HIV to return. Previous tests similar drugs only in 10% of cases made it possible to keep the virus under control for more than four weeks. No combination has previously controlled HIV for more than 8 weeks.

"This is the first study in more than 50 years to show a significant effect on the immune system," said UC San Francisco professor Steven Dicks.

Mot, who presented the findings at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, said she plans to continue monitoring the subjects to see how long they will be able to suppress the virus without ART.

It is not yet clear why 2/3 of the participants did not respond to the vaccine. Mot and her colleagues are now looking into the matter. But, as Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, points out, even a small amount of responders to therapy is already good news. According to Levin, new approach was the first to stop viral replication in the absence of ART.

Scientists note the need to complete these trials and conduct larger and more controlled trials of the drug.

Although the results of the first tests look promising, it is too early to admire. Previously, there have been reports of drugs that can "cure" HIV, but the virus is sure to come back.

If the new treatment is effective, the savings on ART will be huge. The total cost of therapy in developing countries in 2015 was US$15 billion, despite only half of the 36.7 million people living with HIV on treatment.

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When will there be a complete cure for HIV - all the major latest scientific developments in the treatment of infection

Modern antiretroviral therapy has turned HIV infection into a category chronic diseases, but for the near future the goal is to find a cure for complete cure from HIV. We reviewed progress in HIV treatment in 2018, bringing together the most promising developments and directions for finding a cure for them. latest news on the fight against the human immunodeficiency virus.

Per recent times antiretroviral drugs have been improved, their dosage reduced, and HIV vaccines are under development, but a complete cure for HIV has not yet been achieved. Several organizations are pushing for the development of the first functional tool that leaves people living with HIV healthy and drug-free by 2020. But how close are we to achieving this goal? Let's look at the most advanced technologies for a complete cure for HIV.

Stopping HIV replication

One of the most modern methods HIV treatment aims to suppress the ability of the virus to replicate its RNA and make more copies of itself. This approach is commonly used to treat herpetic infection, and although it does not completely get rid of the virus, it can stop its spread. The French company Abivax showed last year in clinical trials that this approach could lead to the development of a functional HIV drug.

Key to its potential is that it can target a reservoir of HIV viruses that lurk in an inactive state inside infected cells.

“Current therapy suppresses the circulating virus by blocking the formation of new viruses, but they do not affect the reservoir. Once you stop taking the medication, the virus comes back in 10-14 days,” says Hartmut Ehrlich, CEO Abivax.

"ABX464 is the first drug candidate ever shown to shrink the HIV reservoir."

The drug, called ABX464, binds to a specific sequence in the virus's RNA, inhibiting its replication. In phase 2a, several patients were given the drug in addition to antiretroviral therapy. Eight of 15 patients treated with ABX464 showed a 25% to 50% reduction in the HIV reservoir at 28 days, compared with no reduction in those who took antiretroviral therapy alone.

Ehrlich emphasizes that a key factor in this drug's potential is that it targets not only the reservoir of HIV lurking in the blood cells, but also hidden viruses found in the gut, the largest reservoir of HIV. The company is currently planning a Phase 2b clinical trial to validate the drug's long-term effects.

“We will follow 200 patients for 6-9 months to determine the maximum level of reservoir contraction and the time needed to reach it. This will take us into the first half of 2020 when we can start preparing for the third phase,” Erlich says.

Destroy HIV forever

Another approach that is becoming popular in the fight against HIV is also following the latent reservoir of the virus. The "shock and kill" or "hit and kill" approach uses latency-altering agents (LRAs) that activate the latent reservoir of HIV, allowing standard antiretroviral therapy to "kill" these viruses.

In 2016, a group of UK universities reported encouraging results from one patient treated using this approach. The news spread around the world, but the researchers warned everyone that these were only preliminary results. The full results of the 50 patients included in the study are expected at a later date.

Similar early results were recently reported by the Israeli company Zion Medical. Gilead, one of the leaders in HIV treatment, has also started clinical trials with a similar approach in partnership with Spanish biotech AELIX Therapeutics.

In Norway, Bionor is testing a similar strategy using a dual vaccine. One stimulates the production of antibodies that block HIV replication, while the other attacks the reservoir. However, so far this approach has not proven its potential in human studies.

In 2017, one of the most advanced trials testing this shock-and-kill method - Phase 1b/2a by Berlin-based Mologen - reported that while the drug could help fight HIV infection, it was not successful in shrinking the HIV reservoir. . And a recent study showed that currently available LRAs activate only less than 5% of the HIV reservoir.

Immunotherapy in the treatment of HIV

What makes HIV so dangerous is that the virus attacks the immune system, leaving people unprotected from infections. But what if we could recharge our immune cells to fight back? Researchers at Oxford and Barcelona reported last year that five of 15 patients in clinical trials were off antiretroviral therapy for 7 months, thanks to immunotherapy that stimulates the immune system against the virus.

Their approach combines a drug to activate the HIV latent reservoir with a vaccine that can elicit an immune response thousands of times stronger than normal. Although they have shown that immunotherapy can be effective against HIV, the results still need to be confirmed.

Bill Gates supports the development of HIV immunotherapy. One of his investments is in Immunocore. This Oxford company has developed T-cell receptors that can seek out and bind HIV and instruct immune T cells to kill any HIV-infected cells, even when their HIV levels are very low - as is often the case for virus reservoir cells.

This approach has been shown to work on human tissue samples, and next step there will be confirmation of whether it works in people living with HIV. But one of the most advanced immunotherapies on this moment is a vaccine being developed by the French company InnaVirVax. The vaccine, called VAC-3S, stimulates the production of antibodies against the HIV 3S protein, causing T cells to attack the virus.

“Our approach is completely different from other vaccines that drive the HIV response. We promote immune recovery so that the immune system, like all tools, better recognizes and destroys the virus,” says Joel Kruse, CEO of InnaVirVax.

After completion of phase 2a, InnaVirVax is now testing VAC-3S in combination with a DNA vaccine from Finnish FIT Biotech, which is expected to lead to a functional cure for HIV.

Gene therapy

It is estimated that about 1% of people in the world are immune to HIV. The reason is a genetic mutation in the gene that codes for CCR5, a protein on the surface of immune cells that the virus uses to enter and infect. People with this mutation are missing part of the CCR5 protein, making it impossible for HIV to bind to it. Using gene therapy, it would theoretically be possible to edit our DNA and introduce this mutation to stop the virus, providing a complete cure for HIV.

American Sangamo Therapeutics is one of the most advanced developers of this approach. The company extracts the patient's immune cells and uses DNA editing nucleases to make them resistant to HIV. In 2016, Sangamo reported that four out of nine patients who received this gene therapy at one stage of the phase 2 study were able to come off antiretroviral therapy with undetectable levels of HIV, and the full results of the study are expected this year.

In the future, gene therapy for HIV could be done with CRISPR, a gene-editing tool that will be much easier and faster to do than previous gene-editing tools. Not too long in the future, HIV may be one of the first diseases to be cured with CRISPR.

When will there be a cure for HIV?

While there are several approaches that could eventually lead to a functional cure for HIV, there are still some challenges. One of the most serious problems associated with any treatment for this viral infection, is the ability of the virus to rapidly mutate and develop drug resistance, and for many of these new approaches there is still no evidence of whether the virus can become resistant to them.

So far, none of these methods of functional cure of HIV has achieved late stage clinical testing. Unfortunately, this means that we are unlikely to reach our 2020 HIV cure goal.

However, 2019 is likely to be a milestone as the first trial of new late-stage treatments due to start this year. If successful, this could lead to the approval of the first functional cure for HIV in a decade.

For several decades, scientists around the world have been developing a cure for HIV. Unfortunately, a drug that completely eliminates the immunodeficiency virus and is available to all HIV-infected people has not yet been created.

Attention! To say that there are no drugs for HIV is wrong. We cannot know this, officially it does not exist, but pharmaceutical companies work exclusively for profit, which is why the previously invented cheap drugs for the immunodeficiency virus did not appear on the pharmaceutical market.

While a new HIV drug is being developed that can permanently eliminate the virus, antiviral drugs are being used. They improve the quality and increase the life expectancy of an infected person.

Their intake does not eliminate the immunodeficiency virus, but in 80-85% of cases it reduces the viral load to an undetectable level. They help to avoid the transition of infection into acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

We offer you to find out why the vaccine has not been officially created, how much more development will be carried out and when will the cure for HIV appear?

Why haven't HIV drugs been developed yet, if their development and investment in research has been going on for decades? The main difficulty is the rapid genetic variability of the virus (mutagenicity).

When antibodies are produced in the body of an HIV-positive person, the virus changes its original “appearance” so that the immune system cannot “recognize” it and neutralize it.

Attention! There are no two completely identical human immunodeficiency viruses. In this regard, HIV is unique - other viruses are also able to mutate, but much less frequently.

In addition, drugs for the treatment of HIV cannot be developed due to the formation of viral recombinants. For example, two distinct subtypes of HIV may exist simultaneously in the blood of an infected person.

Suppose there is a subtype "A" and a subtype "B". They can interbreed, and a hybrid will arise - a completely new subtype of "A/B" or "B/A". Anti-A or anti-B vaccines will not work against him, a new drug will be required - anti-A / B or anti-B / A.

A cure for AIDS has not been found for another reason - the virus is able to "hide" inside some human cells. When it hits target cells, it for a long time may not show up.

Certification

While an HIV vaccine is under development, ARV drugs that have passed certification are being prescribed. Currently, the certificate has been issued and is valid for 39 different antiretrovirals, of which 12 treatment regimens are made.

All drugs are divided into 6 groups:

• nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors,
• non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors,
• protease inhibitors,
• integrase inhibitors,
• receptor inhibitors,
• fusion inhibitors.

ARV pills for HIV are only available with a doctor's prescription. Accurate adherence to the schedule of their intake will avoid the development of resistance.

First stage clinical trials of DNA-4 vaccine

The HIV vaccine "DNA-4" was created by Russian scientists and is a "regional" drug, i.e. affects the subtype of the virus, the most common in Russia (isolate of HIV-1 subtype A).

At the first stage of clinical trials in 2010, it was proved that after intramuscular injection the substance penetrates into the cells (in the injection zone), is transported to the nucleus and forms an immune response.

An experimental HIV vaccine has been tested in the first phase at the medical university them. Pavlova. The participants were volunteers (residents of St. Petersburg) who were not infected with HIV.

Second stage DNA-4 vaccine trials

The second stage of clinical trials of the AIDS vaccine was carried out in 2013-2015. Participants were 8 AIDS centers, total patients - 54 people, of which 3 groups were formed:

1 group (17 people)

Dosage "DNA-4" - 0.25 mg

2 group (17 people)

dosage "DNA-4" - 0.50 mg

3 group (20 people)

injections without active ingredient(calculation for placebo)

Attention! The study was conducted in several regions of Russia. DNA-4 is the first Russian vaccine that has passed up to stage 2 of clinical trials.

The result of the research is the conclusions about the safety of the vaccine in both dosages and the destruction of latent viral reservoirs. Why is the DNA-4 vaccine not on the drug list? Clinical researches not completed - 3 and 4 phases are planned.

Cloned antibodies against HIV infection

For many people, cloned antibodies are the hope to defeat HIV forever. They were created by American and German scientists, but are currently used only to suppress the viral load.

The molecule (3BNC117) is an antibody clone produced in the blood of only 1% of HIV-positive people. They are resistant to 80% of virus strains and have a powerful effect. They are not a complete vaccine, as they are effective against 195 of the 237 known strains of HIV.

Cloned antibodies inhibit development of a deadly dangerous virus prevent the transmission of HIV to terminal stage– AIDS and the development of opportunistic diseases that can lead to death.

Vaccination of HIV-infected children

Immunization of children born from HIV-infected mothers is carried out on a general basis.

Vaccination against:

• measles,
• rubella,
• mumps,
• pneumococcal infection,
• flu,
• poliomyelitis,
• hepatitis B, etc.

Vaccination of children born to HIV-positive mothers is important at any stage in the development of the virus, as they have a higher incidence of infections. AT maternity hospital such babies are not vaccinated against tuberculosis after birth.

The problem of immunizing children is the choice - live attenuated or inactivated vaccine? There is no unified approach in Russia; in America, inactivated vaccines are used.

Vaccination of contact persons

HIV-infected patients are more likely to get sick and die from infectious diseases. It is possible to prevent their development with the help of vaccines, therefore, contact persons are vaccinated.

Attention! General order vaccination is not possible - HIV-positive people develop side effects after the administration of the active substance.

When prescribing a vaccine, doctors are guided by immune status patient. The higher it is, the less side effects per injection. active component. Sometimes assigned passive immune prophylaxis HIV immunoglobulin.

Are HIV-infected people vaccinated?

AIDS vaccination is carried out only with inactivated formulations (contain dead infectious agent or part of it). Vaccines are used against tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, influenza, pneumonia, measles.

Features of vaccination of HIV-positive patients:

• increase in viral load after injection for several weeks,
• an increase in the duration of antibody production,
• ineffectiveness of the vaccine in severely weakened immunity.

There is no cure for AIDS, so antiretroviral therapy is the only chance to survive. Used to fight HIV infection various schemes HAART of 3-4 drugs.

Antiretroviral drugs are an opportunity to live until a vaccine against HIV is created!