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Why no HIV vaccine?

  • 16-12-2020 8:13pm
    #1
    harrymcgowan
    Site Banned Posts: 9 ✭


    The COVID19 vaccine was making me think of why no HIV vaccine exists. I know that there are antiretrovirals but those treat the disease not prevent it (except AIDS).

    Why is there no vaccine that people can get so their body is resistant to HIV even when having a relationship with someone that is HIV positive?


Comments

  • #2
    3d4life
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 918 ✭✭✭3d4life


    Have you gone down the rabbit hole of Kary Mullis, Dr Fauchi et al and HIV ? :D


  • #3
    RoamingDoc
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 174 ✭✭RoamingDoc


    harrymcgowan wrote: »
    Why is there no vaccine that people can get so their body is resistant to HIV even when having a relationship with someone that is HIV positive?

    Work is continuing to take place for this and hopefully it will happen eventually.

    The simple answer is that HIV is actually very difficult to vaccinate against compared to other viruses. HIV is very variable and is considered to mutate very easily as well (there are presently two distinct subtypes but even the same strain can differ in structure). It's just proven to be rather more difficult to generate a viable vaccine against this virus.

    Other viruses, such as measles, smallpox, even SARS-CoV-2 are more consistent in their composition so are relatively easier to vaccinate against.


  • #4
    as_mo_bhosca
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 228 ✭✭as_mo_bhosca


    Have a read of this.

    https://www.hivireland.ie/hiv/prevention/prep/


  • #5
    Anita Blow
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,935 ✭✭✭Anita Blow


    There's many reasons for this but the two biggest are:

    1) High degree of mutation. The main enzyme in HIV, Reverse Transcriptase, makes an error in every 1/10,000 replications. When you consider that a given individual could have millions of virus particles, that's a huge amount of genetic variation. A single individual can have more genetic variety in their virus composition than almost all other human viruses combined. This makes it very hard to find a single vaccine to treat the huge amount of genetically different particles in a single individual, let alone everyone with the disease
    2) HIV differs from most other viruses in that it enters a latent state. When HIV enters the body, it brings all your CD4 immune cells out of hiding and infects them and incorporates itself into the DNA of those cells. Your body clears the active free virus, but the virus within those cells remains. When your immune system returns to the resting state, these infected CD4 cells become dormant and sequester themselves at difficult to reach parts of the body. For as long as they remain dormant, your immune system can't see them and therefore can't attack them (This is why we cannot as yet cure it)


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