If you found Monday's blog about the failures of herpes treatments too depressing, this one isn't going cheer you up all that much. An article published in the January 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that a herpes vaccine that is currently under development didn't work at all against HSV-2 and only protected a small proportion of women against genital infections by HSV-1. Interestingly, and counter to common-wisdom, the scientists also found that more genital herpes infections in their control population were caused by HSV-1 than HSV-2. Even more depressing? The study found that viral shedding occurred more frequently in the vaccinated group than in the controls. That's a pretty significant failure.
This was the same herpes vaccine that had previously shown some efficacy in serodiscordant couples, and so this outcome, in a less specialized pool of 18-30 year old women, is actually a step backwards in its development. As I keep telling all the people who wonder why there isn't a cure or a vaccine for herpes yet, it isn't that scientists aren't trying. It's that they haven't yet found anything that works.
Source: http://std.about.com/b/2012/01/18/a-herpes-vaccine-not-yet.htm
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