Abbott Announces HIV Vaccine Research Findings: 'Another Step Toward Unlocking A Cure'

Abbott Laboratories ABT has announced a potential research breakthrough that could lead to advancements and potential vaccines for the treatment of HIV.

What Happened: Abbott’s researchers have joined a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Université Protestante au Congo in studying approximately 10,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have tested positive for HIV antibodies but have low to non-detectable viral load counts that occurred without the use of antiretroviral treatment.

Why It's Important: These new findings, which were published Tuesday in EBioMedicine — part of The Lancet — could offer a significant new lead in mitigating the HIV crisis.

An estimated 76 million people have been infected with HIV since the disease was first identified, and 38 million people today are living with the virus.

Furthermore, the DRC is home to the oldest known HIV strains, which provides further insight into the disease’s origins.

"Global surveillance work keeps us ahead of emerging infectious diseases — and in this instance we realized we had found something that could be another step toward unlocking a cure for HIV," said Michael Berg, an associate research fellow in infectious disease research at Abbott and lead author of the study.

"The global research community has more work to do — but harnessing what we learn from this study and sharing it with other researchers puts us closer to new treatments that could possibly eliminate HIV."

Image by Mohammad Hassen/Pixabay.