Abbott says researchers in Democratic Republic of Congo have made discoveries that could lead to HIV vaccine

Manufacturer of medical devices, diagnostics and generic drugs Abbott ABT,
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said on Tuesday that a team of scientists found unusually high numbers of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with controlled HIV and said they could be a key to advancing therapies, or even developing a vaccine . The people in question test positive for anti-HIV antibodies, but have a low to undetectable viral load, without using antiretroviral therapy, Abbott said in a statement. The results were published in EbioMedicine, part of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. They “can help researchers uncover biological trends in this population that could lead to advances in HIV treatments – and potentially vaccines,” the statement said. Abbott researchers, working with Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the Protestant University in Congo found that the prevalence of elite controllers HIV was 2.7% to 4.3% in DRC, compared with 0.1% to 2.0% globally. “The discovery of a large group of elite HIV controllers in the DRC is significant given that HIV is a lifelong chronic disease that typically progresses over time,” said Tom Quinn, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, and Head of the International HIV / AIDS Research Section of NIAID. “There were rare cases of infection not progressing in individuals prior to this study, but this high frequency is unusual and suggests that something physiologically interesting is happening in the DRC that is not random. . ” Abbott shares were slightly higher pre-market, but have gained 50% in the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX,
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gained 26%.