Scientists have been trying for a decade to develop a vaccine for AIDS. But at a recent international conference, researchers said it could be another decade before a vaccine is a reality.
In fact, many participants at the 12th World AIDS Conference, held two weeks ago in Geneva, Switzerland, agreed that despite advances and promising new research, in some ways they’re no closer now to solving the AIDS riddle than 14 years ago. One of the best hopes for slowing the virus is to perfect a vaccine much like those that contained smallpox and polio, scientists say. (A vaccine, usually a weakened form of a virus, primes the immune system to recognize and ward off the virus.)
A vaccine is important, researchers say, because 90 percent of the 30 million people now infected with HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – live in developing countries. These nations often lack good hospitals and prevention programs, so containing and treating the disease is difficult. Vaccines, on the other hand, are convenient, inexpensive and easy to administer.
Researchers are conducting experiments with several vaccines, with some encouraging results. Yet there’s also fear that a vaccine could actually cause AIDS in some healthy people by mutating into a killer strain (which it has done in experiments on adult monkeys).
But AIDS isn’t just a problem in developing nations. In the U.S., where the number of new AIDS cases has been declining for several years, there’s some alarming news.
Most of the 40,000 to 80,000 new cases reported each year are among teens, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher said at the conference. (Although homosexual sex still is the primary means of transmitting the virus, the number of infections acquired through heterosexual sex has steadily increased over the past decade, to 13 percent from 3 percent.) “In a country where sex is happening everywhere – movies, TV, everywhere you can imagine – when it comes to addressing it, frankly we have some way to go,” Satcher said. He called for television commercials to help kids understand the risks of unprotected sex.
In addition, some researchers fear that kids will hear about the so-called miracle drugs, like protease (pro-tee-aize) inhibitors, and will stop worrying about safe sex.
That attitude is extremely dangerous, they say. Two years ago, doctors were optimistic that these drugs could control HIV. Now they say that they often have dangerous side effects and may not work long-term. Also, patients who take them must take as many as 20 pills a day!
These treatment drawbacks have contributed to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of HIV. Mutant strains of the virus evolved when some patients stopped taking their medication because of side effects.
Despite all the setbacks discussed at the AIDS conference, researchers are still optimistic that someday, perhaps in the next decade, someone will find a cure for AIDS.
“Cure of HIV infection is not a myth,” said Dr. Roberto Siliciano of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “I think this is a problem that can be solved.”
