Are we headed for an HIV vaccine?

Are we headed for an HIV vaccine? Researchers reported on Saturday an encouraging progress, with an experimental vaccine that elicited an immune response in humans and protected macaques from infection.

The development of this vaccine potential, safe for humans, is now advanced enough to test 2,600 women in Southern Africa.

"These results represent a milestone," study director Virologist Dan Barouch said in a statement from The Lancet.

Joined by other experts, however, he warned that there was no guarantee that the following tests would be so positive. "We must remain cautious," he told AFP.

Two-thirds of Rhesus macaques were protected by the vaccine in laboratory tests.

The results of the life-size test, called Imbokodo (rock, in Zulu), are expected in 2021 or 2022. "It will be only the fifth concept of vaccine against HIV whose effectiveness will be tested in 35 years and history of the epidemic," said the Prof. Barouch

Another, called RV144, has shown that he protects man from HIV to a certain extent. In 2009, a study indicated that it had reduced the risk of infection in 16,000 volunteers in Thailand by 31.2%.

The study published Saturday reports the results of a test in 393 healthy adults, seronegative , aged between 18 and 50 years in East Africa, South Africa, Thailand and the United States

Some received one of the possible vaccine combinations or a placebo, via four injections in 48 weeks. 19659003] These combinations were made of different types of HIV virus, made sufficiently harmless, with the hope of provoking an immune response. But this one was "robust", praised the Pr Barouche.

Phenomenal advance?

The tests showed the safety. Only five participants reported adverse effects, such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness or back pain.

In a separate study, these same vaccines offered protection to two-thirds of the 72 macaques to which researchers then tried to inoculate the virus.

Other specialists interviewed by AFP welcomed this progress.

"I can not repeat enough how much we need a vaccine", underlined François Venter from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). But "we have already experienced this, promising experimental vaccines that have not materialized."

For the French Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, Vaccine Research Institute (National Agency for AIDS Research): "This is probably not the definitive vaccine, but it can be a phenomenal breakthrough. " According to him, "in the best case", this research will produce a vaccine that can be administered in "almost 10 years".

37 million people are living with HIV or AIDS, according to the World Health Organization and 1.8 million cases are contracted each year. The disease has killed some 35 million of the 80 million people it has infected since it was first diagnosed in the early 1980s.

Despite advances in medicine in the prevention and treatment of the disease (PrEP, antiretrovirals, tritherapies), the researchers insist on the measures to not be infected: protection during bad, use of new syringes, sterilization of medical equipment …