Good news for researchers investigating vaccines for B and E subtype HIV strains.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has had an exciting new development in terms of its investigation into a HIV vaccine.

In a clinical trial involving more than 16,000 participants in Thailand, results have shown that the investigational RV144 vaccine is safe and 31% effective in preventing HIV infection.

The US Army sponsored the study which was led by Supachai Rerks-Ngarm of the Thai Ministry of Public Health’s Department of Disease Control and involved 16,402 men and women aged 18 to 30 years old, who were at various levels of risk of the HIV infection.

The trial, in which participants were given either the vaccine or placebo at enrolment, then again after 1 month, 3 months and 6 months, found that 74 of the 8,198 placebo recipients became infected with HIV during the study, compared with just 51 of 8,197 participants who received the RV144 vaccine treatment. 

“These new findings represent an important step forward in HIV vaccine research. For the first time, an investigational HIV vaccine has demonstrated some ability to prevent HIV infection among vaccinated individuals,” said Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of NIAID. 

However, Mr Fauci added that more work still needs to be done: “Additional research is needed to better understand how this vaccine regimen reduced the risk of HIV infection, but certainly this is an encouraging advance for the HIV vaccine field.”

The NIAID and its collaborating partners – Sanofi Pasteur and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases (GSID) – are now working with other leading scientific experts to determine the next steps and the impact of these recent trials on the production of other HIV vaccines.

This discovery comes in the same week as French food company Danone also claimed a breakthrough in medical nutrition targeting the immune system of HIV patients.

Flemming Morgan, President of Nutricia, the medical nutrition division of Danone, said: “The evidence is now building that medical nutrition may be able to make a difference in the lives of patients not only in HIV but across a broad spectrum of immune-related conditions.”

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 30 HIV vaccines have been tested in more than 60 phase I/II trials, involving more than 10,000 healthy volunteers across the world. Results have provided further information to develop vaccines which can better induce anti-HIV specific immune responses.