Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

them.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 490 posts

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#461

Post by inglor_cz »

jl6 wrote: post #232
Nbox9 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDC backing up this claim. Having an undetectable viral load prevents transmission during sex —- but likely not during needle sharing. The answer to why seems to be an obvious “because there are less virus particles”. I’m linking a couple of scientific studies following couples having condomless sex where one partner is HIV positive, on ART with low viral load. Among the about 2000 couples in these studies there were…

It does sound suspiciously like wishful thinking though, doesn’t it? You can’t sample all parts and all fluids of someone’s body all the time. Maybe trace undetectable levels of the virus can be transmitted, and of course they are going to look like a “no transmission” case if you lack the ability to detect that amount of virus. And that’s either not a problem (if trace levels = no symptoms), or a ticking time bomb w…

You need to transmit a certain amount of HIV particles to cause infection. It is called inoculum. In normal sex, it is quite a lot, I wasn't able to find an exact number, but it is in tens of thousands in ther least.

The vast majority of virions seems to be killed by the immune system before they can actually take hold.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#462

Post by sampo »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #457
sampo wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an "independent action hypothesis" in virology. It states that each virus particle (virion) has an independent probability of starting the infection in the body. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2009.006...

So it it turns out true, there is no "safe level" - we could talk about an extremely small probability, but it would still be higher than 0 - not exactly a risk one would like to take.

Yes. Assume 1 virion has a 0.001 chance to start an infection. You could infect 1 person with 692 virions, resulting in a 50% change of them getting ill (1-0.999^692). Or you could infect 692 people each with 1 virion, with 50% chance of at least 1 of them getting ill (35% chance: 1 ill, 12% chance: 2 ill, 3% chance: 3 ill, ...).

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#463

Post by msla »

hatware wrote: post #258
msla wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think everyone working in the medical and pharmaceutical fields is an utterly amoral antisocial personality disorder case? Because that's what it would take for your conspiracy theory to work. If you honestly can't understand compassion, well...

That's rich. People are killing themselves, and tons of scheduled medical procedures are still being postponed. You'll reap what you sow.

If you think everything "Pharma" does is bad, go without medicines.

Fuck around and find out.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#464

Post by refurb »

ausudhz wrote: post #459
refurb wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a drug developer and I’d rather take an Advil than the vaccine. Look at Vioxx. It took 4 years on the market before anyone realized it increased the risk of heart attacks. Advil has been around for decades. It has known risks.

Yes and the known risks are calculated within the trials or after few days of usage. Definitely not 20 years after you've gotten the first pill. Would be pretty hard to correlate it to something that happened 20 years ago.

You completely ignored my example of it taking 4 years to identify the risks associated with Vioxx (which was pulled from the market).

I have all three vaccine doses too, I’m not saying don’t take the vaccine, I’m saying Advil has a more robust safety profile.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#465

Post by refurb »

ausudhz wrote: post #443
refurb wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. Covid has been around for 2 years. The vaccines for 1 year. We don’t know the long term effects of either. Vaccines were trialed for dengue fever that made the disease worse . Vaccines are NOT “the safest drugs out there”.

Quoted post unavailable.

How about 15 years in pharmaceutical development?

Anyone who says “the vaccines are the safest drugs out there” is just lying or incompetent.

The risk of an autoimmune disorder may not show up for years.

Our data collection right now is garbage and it’ll take years to sort through.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#466

Post by mariodiana »

aleks224 wrote: post #85
mlyle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some known HIV "bnAbs", or broadly neutralizing antibodies. The thing is, these are not the antibodies most humans develop in response to HIV. Previous HIV vaccine attempts have only done a fair job at eliciting these broadly neutralizing responses. e.g. SAV001, a "whole killed" HIV vaccine, only produces broadly neutralizing antibodies in about a third of recipients (and less broadly neutralizing response in…

>An "elite controller" is a person living with HIV who is able to maintain undetectable viral loads for at least 12 months despite not having started antiretroviral therapy (ART) . Elite controllers are rare: for every two hundred people living with HIV, approximately one may be an elite controller (0.5%). > It is not entirely understood why some patients are able to achieve undetectable viral loads without ART. http…

I'm going from memory, and I can't remember how many years ago I saw this on television, but I thought it had something to do with a genetic mutation that likely gained a foothold in the Western European population sometime around the plague of the Middle Ages. If I remember correctly, if a person carried one copy of the gene, they could get infected with HIV, but it wouldn't develop into AIDS. If a person carried two copies, they would not even get infected with HIV.

Anybody remember hearing something like this?

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#467

Post by throwaway2037 »

mlyle wrote: post #40
f6v wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not familiar with vaccine tech. Can’t you grow the peptide of interest and package it in a traditional vaccine?

> Can’t you grow the peptide of interest and package it in a traditional vaccine? Traditional way to do this is recombinant approaches (mentioned). These are also in progress. mRNA is much quicker to iterate, though. They tried a few candidate sequences in sHIV to guide their human vaccine development. mRNA vaccines are kind of neat in the way that they create a few day long pulse of new virus-like particles showing…

When you wrote >, did you mean >?

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian_immunodeficiency_virus

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#468

Post by BitwiseFool »

epgui wrote: post #350
BitwiseFool wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating, can you tell me more about your aversion to Advil? I haven never encountered anyone warning about it until now and would like to know more.

I don't have any aversion to Advil, you're missing the point. I'm not saying Advil is dangerous, I'm saying people significantly overestimate the risks of vaccines. If you're concerned about vaccines but not about other common drugs, you're in need of some risk calibration.

>"If you're concerned about vaccines but not about other common drugs, you're in need of some risk calibration."

The good news is that I am not concerned about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations. I misinterpreted your comment because of the way it was worded. This is because I know some over the counter pain medications, like Tylenol, can be dangerous. So, I assumed there was a risk to Advil that I wasn't aware of and wanted to know more, given your background as a Biochemist.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#469

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #458
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes zero sense, but yeah. There was a thing not long ago where talcum powder, I think Johnson & Johnson, had some asbestos contamination (asbestos being another mineral that can come from the same mines, apparently). And people were suing because it gave them cancer of the uterus and other internal parts of the female reproductive system. Which makes you go: Wait a second. How the hell does that happen? That's h…

I find it hard to believe. Wouldn't it make more sense that the powder was in contact with the external reproductive parts for extended amounts of time (which is its normal usage) and as a result some parts managed to get inside?

I don't think people are intentionally pushing talc through their cervix, if that's what you mean. But, pack your vagina with the stuff every day, and I imagine you can have all kinds of problems. If I were to go any further than that about exactly how it works I'd be speculating.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#470

Post by throwaway2037 »

bradlys wrote: post #435
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person on PrEP, it is only recommended for people at higher risk of HIV. In the West, that does not include sexually active straight people unless you have other confounding factors (e.g. IV drug use, partners who are at higher risk, etc.). Essentially all gay men (or, more accurately, "men who have sex with men") are at higher risk, which is why it is recommended for them.

Gay men living in cities also have many more sexual partners than the rest of the populous. The men I’ve met who have had 1000+ partners is exclusive to gay men. I’ve yet to meet a straight man who isn’t a celebrity that has gotten anywhere near that. Yet this order of magnitude (100-1000) is common among gay men. The risk levels for your average young straight man in the west are obscenely low these days. You’ll hav…

I would also add East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, Macao) to that list. The rate of HIV positive ("seropositive") status is still incredibly low. Ignore China for a moment because it is hard to believe any of their official gov't stats! These countries are definitely much more sexually active (more lifetime partners) than more socially conservative neighbors in South Asia (Indian subcontinent).

Interestingly, in these countries, there is still ready access to sex workers in any medium-sized city and above, yet infection rates are still very low.

I must confess: I wrote the above post strictly about heterosexuals. I have never read anything seropositive rates for gay men in these regions. (I write the last sentence with the assumption that gay women have a tiny risk to contract and spread HIV.)

More about "seropositive": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV-positive_people

Post reply on HN