Because there is no vaccine for HIV, the only way people can prevent infection with the virus is to avoid behaviors putting them at risk of infection, such as sharing needles and having unprotected sex.
Many people infected with HIV AIDS have no symptoms. Thus there is no way of knowing with any certainity whether a sexual partner is infected unless they have repeatedly tested negative and have not engaged in risky behavior.
Abstainence or using a condom may offer partial protection during oral, anal or vaginal sex. Only water-based lubricants should be used with male latex condoms.
Even though there is some evidence to show spermicides can destroy HIV, it is not proven as a prevention system.
Recently, NIAID-supported two studies that found adult male medical circumcision reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV infection by approximately 50 percent. The studies only pertain to heterosexual forms of transmission. As with most prevention strategies, adult male medical circumcision is not completely effective at preventing HIV transmission. Circumcision will not be effective on its own, it needs to be combind with safe practices such as condom use.
Vaccines help the immune system to recognize a pathogen so that it can fight it off if it shows up. Despite extraordinary advances in understanding both HIV and the human immune system, a fully successful HIV vaccine continues to elude researchers. This why we primarily reley on HIV medications like Aluvia (Kaletra), and Combivir.
HIV attacks CD4+ T cells, the most important part of the immune system that coordinates and directs the activities of other types of immune cells that combat intruding microbes. For a vaccine to be effective, it will need to be able to activate these cells-a difficult feat if they’re being infected and destroyed by the virus.Scientist have not figured out the correlates of immunity or protection for HIV and are working to make vaccines to induce the necessary immune resonse necessary.
Unlike other viral diseases for which investigators have made successful vaccines, there are no documented cases of complete recovery from HIV infection. Therefore, HIV vaccine researchers have no human model of recovery from infection and subsequent protection from re-infection to guide them. HIV will continually mutate in an infected person while it recombinds to evolve into brand new strains. This extensive diversity of HIV poses a challenge to vaccine design as an HIV vaccine would need to protect against many different strains of the virus circulating throughout the world. Traditional vaccines have had to defend against one or a limited number of strains.