There are many opinions on the need and/or importance of vaccines in preventing the spread of disease. Our children are required to get vaccinations before entering school, and healthcare workers must have them when working in environments where they can come into contact with bloodborne pathogens. In healthcare facilities, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) are the two most prominent infectious concerns for medical staff.
For your initial post, research the two diseases HIV and HCV. Based on your research, discuss whether you think that a vaccine will be developed for either of these diseases within the next ten years. Why or why not?
For your reply post, expand on your peers’ ideas by sharing examples from your own experience or readings, suggesting outside resources to support the topic, and/or asking furthering questions to dig deeper into the topic.
Lifesaving HIV medications (known as antiretroviral treatment or ART) are now available to more people living with HIV than ever before. As long as people living with HIV are taking HIV medication on a regular basis, they can remain healthy and avoid transferring HIV to their partners. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or antiretroviral therapy (ART) may also be available to those with a high risk of contracting HIV. While over 1.7 million individuals worldwide were diagnosed with HIV in 2019, 37,968 people in the United States contracted the virus last year. We need a comprehensive set of HIV prevention strategies that are widely available to anybody who could benefit from them in order to control and finally eliminate HIV worldwide.
The long-term goal is to develop a safe and efficient vaccine that will prevent HIV infection in people across the world. When it comes to HIV prevention, even if vaccines only protect certain people or reduce infection rates by less than 100% protection, they can still have a major influence on transmission rates and help manage the pandemic, especially in communities at high risk of obtaining HIV. Many more people will be protected from the virus if a vaccine is only half successful in stopping new infections from spreading. Reduce the number of new infections and therefore stop the epidemic.
The hepatitis C virus causes hepatitis C, a liver illness. It is possible to have hepatitis C that lasts only a few weeks, to a serious and long-lasting infection. “Acute” and “chronic” refer to hepatitis C infections, which might be fresh or long-term. Injecting drug users, or those who have injected only once in the past, even if it was many years ago HIV-infected people Maintaining hemodialysis patients with particular medical problems, such as those with chronically abnormal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels, and those who have ever had maintenance dialysis (an enzyme found within liver cells). Prior to July 1992, those who received blood or blood components through transfusion or organ transplantation had their hepatitis C virus infection status confirmed as a result of receiving blood from a donor who was later found to be infected with the virus.
Personnel in the fields of health care, emergency medicine, and public safety who have come in contact with hepatitis C-infected blood (through needle sticks, sharps, or mucosal exposures) Children born to hepatitis C-infected moms Hepatitis C virus (HCV) vaccine development has long been regarded as a challenging problem because of the wide genetic variation in this RNA virus and because convalescent people and chimpanzees can become infected again the following reexposure to the virus.
In contrast, advances in the study of antiviral immune responses in patients with viral clearance have revealed critical pathways that play a role in viral infection management. Preventative chimpanzee vaccination studies have shown that a robust immune response against several viral epitopes is essential for preventing the spread of the disease and the development of chronic infection. Inducing cross-neutralizing antibodies in a multispecific B cell response may aid in cellular responses. Chronic carriers’ immune systems are compromised, and therapeutic vaccine formulations now being tested in clinical trials need to restore T cell activities to boost their efficiency.
Barouch D. H. (2008). Challenges in the development of an HIV-1 vaccine. Nature, 455(7213), 613–619. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07352
Stoll-Keller, F., Barth, H., Fafi-Kremer, S., Zeisel, M. B., & Baumert, T. F. (2009). Development of hepatitis C virus vaccines: challenges and progress. Expert review of vaccines, 8(3), 333–345. https://doi.org/10.1586/14760584.8.3.333
Edited by Natasia Jackson on Apr 24, 2022, 11:51:30 AM
