( s] to live longer' Dr. Roederer says. ...)HIV Vaccine for Monkeys Increases Survival Rates,Health

s] to live longer,' Dr. Roederer says. Likewise, he adds, if HIV vaccines can prevent the destruction of these memory cells in humans, it may be possible to provide people with longer, healthier lives.

In Dr. Letvin's study, he and his colleagues looked at the effect of preserving the memory CD4+ T cells over the long term. A total of 30 monkeys -- 24 vaccinated and six unvaccinated controls -- were infected with SIV and followed for nearly three years. The vaccine helped control the infection for the first 112 days, but thereafter, the virus levels and total CD4+ counts in the vaccinated and unvaccinated animals did not differ significantly.

But the vaccine protected the memory CD4+ T cells from the virus early on, and the levels of memory CD4+ T cells remained at significantly higher levels in the vaccinated animals for the 850 days they were studied.

'This [early protection] had huge consequences for the development of disease,' says Dr. Letvin. 'When infection did occur, the monkeys preserved their memory CD4+ T cells better and lived longer.'

Moreover, the researchers found that measuring a subset of the memory CD4+ T cells, so-called central memory CD4+ T cells, could help predict how the monkey would fare in the long run. Since these new studies indicate that the central memory CD4+ T cell counts appear to be a crucial predictor of long-term health, blood samples from human clinical trial participants might now be examined for this marker. That way, says Dr. Letvin, scientists can gauge how well a vaccine will perform simply by measuring the central memory cell levels in the first few months after infection.

(Source:Eureka)
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