Group items tagged

"Researchers say they want to emphasize, however, that the HPV vaccine commonly used by millions of women around the world is perfectly safe if done prior to infection with the virus. The concerns raised by this study relate only to viral therapies or possible use of a therapeutic vaccine after the virus has already been integrated into human cells. "It's been known for decades that only women with prior infection with HPV get cervical cancer," said Andrey Morgun, an assistant professor and a leader of the study in the OSU College of Pharmacy. "In about 90 percent of cases it's naturally eliminated, often without any symptoms. But in a small fraction of cases it can eventually lead to cancer, in ways that have not been fully understood.""

People keep blaming the emergence of HIV on science, or at least medicine. For the longest time this came in the form of the claim that it was all due to contaminated polio vaccine. That turned out to be factually groundless. Now a group of scientists in the US thinks it may all be down to the greatest medical intervention of all: the eradication of smallpox.

"A more potentially useful observation about HIV and viruses comes from Jennifer Smith of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and colleagues in the 1 June issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, in which they report that men with HPV infection on their penis are nearly twice as likely to catch HIV than men without. They suspect the virus - which causes cervical cancer in women, and genital warts in men and women - attracts lymphocytes to the skin of the penis for HIV to infect, or creates micro-lesions where it can enter. That's good news, because we have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be completely safe. The team calculates that vaccinating men against HPV could prevent as many cases of HIV as more widely hailed circumcision efforts. It just goes to show that vaccination - already one of the biggest success stories of medicine - can continue to throw up unexpected benefits."