a promising new vaccine trail

He is expected since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 35 years ago. Researchers reported on Saturday, July 7, encouraging progress in the fight against AIDS, an experimental vaccine against HIV that provoked an immune response in humans and protected macaques from infection.

The study reports test results in 393 healthy, seronegative adults aged 18 to 50 in East Africa, South Africa, Thailand and the United States.

"An important step"

" These results represent a milestone" said study director, virologist Dan Barouch, in a statement from The Lancet. Joined by other experts, he warned, however, 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 development of this vaccine potential, safe for humans, is now advanced enough to launch a test on 2,600 women in southern Africa.

The results of the full-scale test, called Imbokodo (rock, in Zulu), are expected in 2021 or 2022.

Fifth Hope Vaccine against HIV

"It will be only the fifth concept of HIV vaccine whose effectiveness will be tested in the 35 years and a few history of the epidemic"

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 Thailand by 31.2% among the 16,000 volunteers.

Some 37 million people are living with HIV or AIDS, according to the World Organization of health, 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 sex, use of new syringes, or sterilization of medical equipment.