A ‘Hint of Good News’ for Genital Herpes Vaccine

[Forest]

https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/gen-003-therapeutic-bivalent-vaccine-candidate-genital-herpes-simplex-virus-type-2-hsv-2

[Southwestrancher]

3 hours ago, Forest said:

https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/gen-003-therapeutic-bivalent-vaccine-candidate-genital-herpes-simplex-virus-type-2-hsv-2

Shedding rates were "reduced"....no good to me.....still have to have "the talk". And that talk includes telling someone they could be infected with a lifetime, incurable disease. Forget it. For me, something has to be a complete cure or a completeimpossibility of infecting someone else with a life sentence of disease in their body. I'm glad they're still working on it, if they are, but.....

[Divon]

On 11/3/2018 at 12:48 AM, Southwestrancher said:

Shedding rates were "reduced"....no good to me.....still have to have "the talk". And that talk includes telling someone they could be infected with a lifetime, incurable disease. Forget it. For me, something has to be a complete cure or a completeimpossibility of infecting someone else with a life sentence of disease in their body. I'm glad they're still working on it, if they are, but.....

Well the plan is to mix several things as a cocktail mix which will give a result of more or less impossible to infect someone. Let´s say valttex, pritelivir and Gen-003 and also using condoms.. Assuming all of these things work together and all it won´t make it entirely impossible to infect someone when combining all of that but probably pretty damn close to impossible. If that´s not good enough for you, I will just be honest and say that its not gonna become better than that the coming 10-15 years.

We actually have quite a lot of incurable diseases in our bodies and obviously many of them are contagious. If treatment gets to the point where u can almost completely inactivate all the troubles that HSV can cause then there won´t be much reason to fear it. It will still be a cost / annoyance to buy medicine to reduce the symptoms (assuming u even need that) but stigma will be greatly reduced either way.

For me it´s good enough to even hear that better treatment is on the way.

[ManagingIllness]

Here are the actual results from the 2018 paper:

RESULTS
Study Population Of 457 subjects screened, 310 were randomized. Forty-five subjects were randomized to placebo and the 30/50 dose group and 44 to each of the other dose groups. All randomized subjectsr eceived at least one dose of GEN-003 or placebo. The most common reasons for screen failure were non-compliance with baseline swab collection, abnormal laboratory measurements or seronegativity for HSV-2 (Supplementary Figure S1). Overall, 230 of the 265 (87%) subjects who were randomized to one of the six GEN-003 dose combinations completed the study through 12 months. Fifteen subjects (5%) discontinued study treatment. All 45 subjects in the placebo group completed the study until 28 days after the last dose. Mean subject age was 36 years (range 19–50). Most subjects were women (70%). Time from initial diagnosis of HSV-2 and number of reported annual recurrences were similar between groups (Table 1).

Effect of GEN-003 Antigen and Adjuvant Dose Combinations on HSV-2 Shedding Rate
During each 28-day collection period, a mean of at least 95% of the anogenital swab samples were collected for each treatment group, except during the immediate post-vaccination collection period for the 60/25 group (92%). Overall, HSV-2 was detected in 19% (3,225 of 16,814) of swabs collected at baseline. Baseline viral shedding rate was 23.2% for placebo and ranged from 13.6% to 27.1% for the six active dose combinations. During the 28 days immediately following the last dose, shedding was unchanged for the placebo group (22.2%) and ranged from 8.5% to 16.0% for the active dose combinations. Rate ratios (95% CI) for viral shedding immediately after treatment by treatment group were: 0.82 (0.49, 1.36), 30/25 dose; 0.64 (0.45, 0.92), 30/50 dose; 0.63 (0.37, 1.10), 30/75 dose; 0.56 (0.36, 0.88), 60/25 dose; 0.58 (0.38, 0.89), 60/50 dose; 0.45 (0.16, 0.79), 60/75 dose and 0.98 (0.76, 1.26), placebo (Table 2; Figure 1A). Twelve months after the last dose, statistically significant reductions in rate ratios (95% CI) for viral shedding were: 0.34 [(0.19, 0.61); p=0.0003], 30/75 dose; 0.38 [(0.25, 0.57); p<0.0001], 60/50 dose; and 0.43 [(0.23, 0.82); p=0.01], 60/75 dose. Ranking analysis of the change from baseline in viral shedding rates during the immediate postvaccination collection period showed that the 60/50 and 60/75 dosing combinations were most likely to lead to the greatest reduction in shedding rate (Figure 2). The probability of ranking first was 0.259, 60/50 dose; 0.211, 60/75 dose; 0.157, 60/25 dose; 0.113, 30/25 dose; 0.081, 30/50 dose; and 0.071, placebo.

[JHenry]

Help me, can you break this down in layman’s terms for the benefit of people like me that are scientifically challenged?  Thank you, Henry. 

[MikeHerp]

In summary, I think it means that 12 months after vaccination, the two most effective doses showed 38% reduction and 43% reduction in shedding (pls someone correct me if I am wrong).

These are modest results, but the results were statistically significant.

Those aren't numbers that would make you throw away your valtrex if you were having sex.  But, combined with valtrex, it would be quite helpful.  Further, you would have some modest baseline protection even without valtrex.

Earlier studies by Genocea showed some continuing protection even 24 months after vaccination.  

GEN-003 was an important advance in the field, though of course, one would wish it was a bit more effective.  Still, I'd definitely take it if it was marketed.  I believe millions would.

 

[MikeHerp]

On 11/4/2018 at 1:17 PM, Divon said:

Well the plan is to mix several things as a cocktail mix which will give a result of more or less impossible to infect someone. Let´s say valttex, pritelivir and Gen-003 and also using condoms.. Assuming all of these things work together and all it won´t make it entirely impossible to infect someone when combining all of that but probably pretty damn close to impossible. If that´s not good enough for you, I will just be honest and say that its not gonna become better than that the coming 10-15 years.

We actually have quite a lot of incurable diseases in our bodies and obviously many of them are contagious. If treatment gets to the point where u can almost completely inactivate all the troubles that HSV can cause then there won´t be much reason to fear it. It will still be a cost / annoyance to buy medicine to reduce the symptoms (assuming u even need that) but stigma will be greatly reduced either way.

For me it´s good enough to even hear that better treatment is on the way.

I agree with Devon.  The big deal about Herpes is that, not only it's incurable.  But the treatments aren't all that effective either.  

If treatments were more effective or more convenient, or could be combined, it would be less of a big deal.  No, not ideal, but better.

Stigma related to HIV has been significantly reduced in part because the medications against it have become very effective, even if they aren't full cures.  If you said that HIV is scary to many people, I wouldn't disagree, but keep in mind that it was once considered a death sentence and that people used to pull their kids out of schools if they heard that some child there has HIV.  When I first heard that Magic Johnson is HIV positive, I just wondered when he's going to die and whether that will be soon.

Today I just assume that Magic Johnson will one day die of old age and wonder what moves he will make next as general manager of the Lakers.  Having more effective remedies makes a difference in perceptions.