Posts Tagged ‘Combivir’
HIV
Because there is no vaccine for HIV, the only way people can prevent infection with the virus is to avoid behaviors putting them at risk of infection, such as sharing needles and having unprotected sex.
Many people infected with HIV (AIDS) have no symptoms. Therefore, there is no way of knowing with certainty whether a sexual partner is infected unless he or she has repeatedly tested negative for the virus and has not engaged in any risky behavior.
Abstaining from having sex or using male latex condoms or female polyurethane condoms may offer partial protection, during oral, anal, or vaginal sex. Only water based lubricants can be used when using a condom.
Even though there is some evidence to show spermicides can destroy HIV, it is not proven as a prevention system.
Recently, NIAID-supported two studies that found adult male medical circumcision reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV infection by approximately 50 percent. The studies only pertain to heterosexual forms of transmission. As with other prevention strategies, male circumcision is not completely effective at preventing the transmission of HIV. Circumcision will be more effective if it is a part of a more complete prevention strategy that includes condoms.
Vaccines help the body’s immune system to recognize a harmful organism and kill it when the body sees the real thing. Despite extraordinary advances in understanding both HIV and the human immune system, a fully successful HIV vaccine continues to elude researchers. This is why we primarily reley on HIV medications like Kaletra (Lopinavir, Ritonavir), and Combivir.
HIV attacks CD4+ T cells, the most important part of the immune system that coordinates and directs the activities of other types of immune cells that combat intruding microbes. In order for a vaccine to be effective it would need to be able to activate these cells- a hard feat if they are being infected and destroyed by the HIV virus.Scientists have not identified the correlates of immunity, or protection, for HIV and are still trying to design vaccines to induce the appropriate immune responses necessary for protection.
Unlike other viral diseases for which investigators have made successful vaccines, there are no documented cases of complete recovery from HIV infection. So, HIV vaccine research has no actual human model of recovery from an infection and subsequent protection from re-infection to help it. HIV will continually mutate in an infected person while it recombinds to evolve into brand new strains. This extensive diversity of HIV poses a challenge to vaccine design as an HIV vaccine would need to protect against many different strains of the virus circulating throughout the world. Vaccines in the past have only had to fight off a small number of strains, even one.
