in the early days of the epidemic in the
1980s a person would be diagnosed and
then have maybe only two years of life
left
today
people are living virtually a normal
lifespan because of the effective
medications that we have today whereas
before HIV was called the death sentence
today it's a life sentence
HIV today is a manageable chronic
condition
tpn got started when there was a young
gay man here in Chicago
who was newly diagnosed and he didn't
know where to go to for information
resources or just even support what
makes HIV so tricky is that it hijacks a
person's own immune system
to then just create more copies of
itself and as complicated as our immune
system is that kind of makes it
difficult to fight the virus but it also
gives us opportunities at various points
to fight the virus to stop that
duplication effort that's why we have so
many different drugs is because these
drugs fight the virus at various points
in the reproduction process
the search board here began in Earnest
shortly after the HIV epidemic started
and over the last four plus decades more
than 84 million people around the world
have been diagnosed with the virus yet
we still don't have a cure or a 100
effective form of prevention we are used
to historically
a an infectious disease occurring and in
addition to looking for treatments
medication treatments to looking for
preventive vaccines this was true for
measles and mumps and rubella and polio
and chickenpox whooping cough other
types of of childhood diseases
so we're talking about two different
types of vaccines protection for people
not infected but who are at risk and two
of types of vaccines that are
therapeutic that would be of assistance
to the immune system and of an already
effect infected person with HIV this
sounded on Paper 20 30 years ago like it
could be easier than it's turned out to
be
one of the vaccine candidates that was
in clinical trials this turned out not
to be nearly as effective this is at
least the third or fourth such vaccine
candidate that has proven not to do what
we would like it to do
he's talking about mosaico the trial was
a partnership between the U.S government
and the pharmaceutical company Jansen in
January of 2023 researchers announced
they were ending their clinical trial
after finding the vaccine did not reduce
a person's risk of getting HIV compared
to the placebo it was a blow to the
research Community but not the end of
the line for finding a vaccine
we've learned something from that and
scientists will take what they've
learned and work towards the next
solution
there are other vaccines being studied
but those are an early development we
always hope for the best but the
difference now than say 20 or 30 even 40
years ago is that
the treatments we have for HIV the
antivirals suppress the virus maintain a
healthy immune system keep an individual
from transmitting HIV sexually have
resulted in
a functional cure
there are at least three different
commercial products now out there
available for the prevention of HIV a
pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV
involves a pill a day or an injection
every two months of a single drug and
these are great these make it easy other
sex-related HIV prevention tools include
anti-retroviral infused vaginal rings
and of course condoms
Fight Continues and it's just going to
get better the Paradigm is changing so
it's like what my best friend said at
the time
almost 30 years ago when I told him
that I was living with that I'm living
with HIV
he said well that's your strategy
all you have to do is hold out until the
next development
in the early days of the epidemic in the
1980s a person would be diagnosed and
then have maybe only two years of life
left
today
people are living virtually a normal
lifespan because of the effective
medications that we have today whereas
before HIV was called the death sentence
today it's a life sentence
HIV today is a manageable chronic
condition
tpn got started when there was a young
gay man here in Chicago
who was newly diagnosed and he didn't
know where to go to for information
resources or just even support what
makes HIV so tricky is that it hijacks a
person's own immune system
to then just create more copies of
itself and as complicated as our immune
system is that kind of makes it
difficult to fight the virus but it also
gives us opportunities at various points
to fight the virus to stop that
duplication effort that's why we have so
many different drugs is because these
drugs fight the virus at various points
in the reproduction process
the search board here began in Earnest
shortly after the HIV epidemic started
and over the last four plus decades more
than 84 million people around the world
have been diagnosed with the virus yet
we still don't have a cure or a 100
effective form of prevention we are used
to historically
a an infectious disease occurring and in
addition to looking for treatments
medication treatments to looking for
preventive vaccines this was true for
measles and mumps and rubella and polio
and chickenpox whooping cough other
types of of childhood diseases
foreign
so we're talking about two different
types of vaccines protection for people
not infected but who are at risk and two
of types of vaccines that are
therapeutic that would be of assistance
to the immune system and of an already
effect infected person with HIV this
sounded on Paper 20 30 years ago like it
could be easier than it's turned out to
be
one of the vaccine candidates that was
in clinical trials this turned out not
to be nearly as effective this is at
least the third or fourth such vaccine
candidate that has proven not to do what
we would like it to do
he's talking about mosaico the trial was
a partnership between the U.S government
and the pharmaceutical company Jansen in
January of 2023 researchers announced
they were ending their clinical trial
after finding the vaccine did not reduce
a person's risk of getting HIV compared
to the placebo it was a blow to the
research Community but not the end of
the line for finding a vaccine
we've learned something from that and
scientists will take what they've
learned and work towards the next
solution
there are other vaccines being studied
but those are an early development we
always hope for the best but the
difference now than say 20 or 30 even 40
years ago is that
the treatments we have for HIV the
antivirals suppress the virus maintain a
healthy immune system keep an individual
from transmitting HIV sexually have
resulted in
a functional cure
there are at least three different
commercial products now out there
available for the prevention of HIV a
pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV
involves a pill a day or an injection
every two months of a single drug and
these are great these make it easy other
sex-related HIV prevention tools include
anti-retroviral infused vaginal rings
and of course condoms
Fight Continues and it's just going to
get better the Paradigm is changing so
it's like what my best friend said at
the time
almost 30 years ago when I told him
that I was living
with HIV
he said well that's your strategy
all you have to do is hold out until the
next development
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