A new vaccine designed to prevent people with genital herpes from passing the virus on to their sexual partners has begun its first patient trials at a hospital in England.
Two healthy volunteers have been given the jab at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, in the first phase of a study that could eventually provide the first effective immunization against the incurable sexually transmitted infection.
Biomedical Research Models Inc. has received a $908,733 grant from the National Institutes of Health for the second year of the company’s effort to develop a vaccine for herpes simplex virus type 2, or genital herpes.
The privately held company is in the middle of a three-year effort to create a vaccine for HSV-2, which is sexually transmitted. The NIH awarded nearly $892,000 for the first year of the study and could award another $763,000 for the third year.
New research suggests that people who are infected with both HIV-1, a strain of the AIDS virus, and herpes simplex virus type 2 could benefit in more than one way by taking a herpes drug called acyclovir. In addition to treating herpes, the medication appears to also slow the progression of HIV.
“While the HIV-disease ameliorating effect we have observed is modest, it could add one more tool to help people with HIV infection stay healthy for longer,” study co-author Dr. Jairam Lingappa, of the University of Washington, said in a news release from The Lancet.
Herpes medication does not reduce the risk of HIV transmission from individuals with HIV and genital herpes, Dr Joseph Makhema revealed at a press briefing held last Thursday at the Botswana Harvard Partnership buildings in Gaborone.
He said a UW- led internationally study found out that herpes medication demonstrated modest reduction in HIV disease progression. Makhema, who was the leader of the study in Botswana Project Director for the Botswana Harvard Partnership, said the recently completed internationally multi center clinical trial was taken by people infected with both HIV and Herpes Simplex virus-2 (HSV-2). He explained that multiple studies have shown that frequent genital herpes recurrences increase the amount of HIV in the blood and genital tract. “The HIV is also shed from genital herpes ulcers and persons with such ulcers transmit HIV to others more efficiently,” he said.
Herpes zoster infection could arise from treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with a monoclonal antibody against tumor necrosis factor, investigators here concluded.
RA patients treated with anti-TNF antibodies had double the risk of herpes zoster infection compared with those who received conventional disease-modifying drugs, Anja Strangfeld, M.D., of the German Rheumatism Research Center, and colleagues reported in the Feb. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Although the results require confirmation in other studies, the authors concluded that the findings support “careful monitoring of patients treated with monoclonal anti-TNF-alpha antibodies for early signs and symptoms of herpes zoster.”
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