Another Aids wonder from Kenya? http://www.eastandard.net/mags/society/articles.php?articleid=771The discovery of discordant couples —those who enjoy unprotected sex for a long time and one of them escapes infection —adds yet another piece to the puzzle of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids).
Nyanza Province, with about 160, 000 such couples, has the highest concentration of this phenomenon in Africa.
Which puts Kenya under the international spotlight of Aids wonders for a second time in six years.
Back in 1998, scientists were shocked to find that some prostitutes in Nairobi’s Majengo slums were safe from the Human Immunodeficiency Virus even though they repeatedly had unprotected sexual intercourse with infected men.
Experiments showed that the killer T-Cells unique to the women’s systems destroyed the deadly virus.
The finding sent excited researchers from the University of Nairobi and Oxford University trooping to the laboratory for a life-saving Aids vaccine.
They have been upbeat for much of the past three years since starting trials on volunteers from Kenya, Uganda and the UK in 2001.
By May this year, scientists working under the Kenya Aids Vaccine Initiative were still optimistic that the world’s first effective vaccine against Aids was in the pipeline.
The project manager, Dr Omu Anzala, was quoted in the media as saying, "We are through with Phase One of the tests and both vaccines are promising in inducing the body’s immune system."
Response
But their hopes seemed to fall through with the announcement early this month that the vaccine did not trigger the acceptable immune response.
Only 25 per cent among 86 volunteers initially showed the right response, which did not last long.
Experts deem a vaccine effective if it induces the desired reaction in 60 per cent of the test subjects.
With this month’s announcement, hopes of a vaccine were as good as shattered.
The International Aids Vaccine Initiative has already suspended similar recruitment of volunteers from South Africa and Switzerland.
The scientists working in Kenya have, however, indicated they will only abandon the research all together if "the results in a small remaining sample are not dramatic".
The discordant couples are yet to stimulate as much interest in research locally as the Majengo women did six years ago.
Studies in Uganda and Thailand attributed their resistance to HIV infection to "unknown genetic factors".
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