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An effort to find a cure for AIDS has been underway ever since it struck the African coast in the 1980s, and it seems that for the first time, a new vaccine could be able to completely wipe out the deadly HIV virus from the body, according to a recent study.

The vaccine is currently being tested on a non-human form of HIV, termed simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV, which causes AIDS in monkeys or simians. 

So, to make this vaccine compatible for humans, it could take a while, may be five years.

Testing this on the HIV virus could take about a year or two, depending the sustained successes on the simians.

“Till recently, HIV infection has been only cured in a small number of highly publicised clinical cases which are unusual in which the HIV-infected individuals were treated with anti-viral drugs immediately after the onset of the infection or got a stem cell transplant to combat cancer,” said a top scientist associated with the research.

He added, “Our latest conclusion implies that certain immune responses owing to a new vaccine may have the ability to remove HIV completely.”

So what does this mean? It simply means that only persons with HIV and not full-blown AIDS could benefit from this development, in the near future, which could be as long as five-six years.

The new method involves the use of cytomegalo virus (CMV), which is a common virus present in most people.

The scientists found that pairing CMV with SIV had a unusual beneficial effect. They discovered that a modified version of the CMV engineered to express SIV proteins produces and indefinitely maintains the so-called “effector memory” T-cells that could search and destroy SIV-infected cells.

T-cells are a vital part of the body’s immune system, which battles diseases. But T-cells produced by conventional vaccines of SIV cannot eliminate the virus.

The SIV T-cells produced by the modified CMV were different. About 50 per cent monkeys administered highly pathogenic SIV after being vaccinated with this vaccine were infected with SIV but soon the SIV virus was eliminated from the body.

So, there could be hope for the HIV infected, by eliminating the virus, in may be five to six years time, but those inflicted with AIDS will not benefit from this development, which is considered one of the biggest for the HIV-infected.