Does Uganda hold the hope for an AIDS vaccine?
Africa may hold the hope for a vaccine to combat HIV/AIDS and this hope may lie with the Ugandan people.
Researchers there are saying that they may have encountered some Ugandans who actually show a resistance to HIV.
Though the research is still in its early stages, here’s what they are seeing:
“They have special white blood cells that can only be produced when the virus attacks the body. However, even with the most sophisticated tests, HIV could not be found in these individuals, implying that the virus had tried to infect them but the immune system kicked it out.
…
At the AIDS Information Centre in Kampala, the UVRI scientists are studying 70 discordant couples to see if some of them are indeed resistant to HIV. These are couples that have had unprotected sex for more than a year, one partner has had HIV for long while the other has not become infected.”
Again, this is all too early to tell. However, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this research leads to a discovery of, at last, an HIV vaccine.
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