Although the authors caution that further efforts are needed to learn more about the duration of the protective immune response observed here, the results are significant. “Our results clearly challenge the paradigm that mucosal protection requires significantly higher levels of neutralizing antibodies, with a capacity in the blood. Bomsel.” These findings may help explain why a small population of highly exposed, but HIV-negative women with gp41-specific IgA in vaginal secretions are protected from infection. We were able to recapitulate in a vaccine that some individuals of course. “New research shows that protective immunity against can be achieved without the presence of virus neutralizing antibodies in the blood. The study, published by Cell Press in the February issue of the journal Immunity, demonstrates that the vaccine stimulates the production of specific anti-HIV in vaginal tissue was sufficient to protect monkeys from exposure to live virus. The results may also help explain why some people who do not have antibodies to HIV in the blood are able to resist infection, even when they are repeatedly exposed to HIV.
HIV is often transmitted through sexual contact when infected bodily fluids of a person to contact with the genital or rectal mucous membranes of another. After the initial infection in the mucous membranes, or mucosa, the virus copies itself to quick and floods the bloodstream. A common strategy against HIV-1 vaccine is to induce antibodies to HIV in the blood. However, this approach has not proven effective and alternative strategies are needed. “We designed a vaccine strategy to protect the initial sites of viral entry, especially the female genitals and the rectum, causing mucosal antibodies in the same, which we hope will be able to prevent the establishment of a viral infection early,” said the study’s lead author Dr
Dr Bomsel and his colleagues have developed a vaccine against gp41, a region of the HIV virus that has shown some promise in studies of mucosal HIV-1 challenge. The vaccine was administered to macaques to either intranasally or intramuscularly. The animals were exposed to the monkeys tested for HIV vaginal and six months after infection. Surprisingly, five of five vaccinated animals were protected from viral replication in the blood and exhibited vaginal gp41-specific antibodies with various viral neutralizing effects