The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its latest estimates on the number of new HIV infections in the United States:
HIV remains a serious health problem, with an estimated 47,500 people becoming newly infected with the virus in the United States in 2010. Youth make up 7% of the more than 1 million people in the US living with HIV. About 12,000 youth were infected with HIV in 2010. The greatest number of infections occurred among gay and bisexual youth. Nearly half of all new infections among youth occur in African American males.
Included is this graph of at-risk populations:
Clearly awareness of HIV and how it is spread is not enough to prevent new infections. Would an effective HIV vaccine make a difference?
It would be interesting to see how an effective vaccine would change these numbers over time. I think that regardless of the effect, you would see a difference (positive or negative). It might “appear” to be an incentive for more risky behavior, now that HIV can be thoroughly prevented with an effective vaccine. The direct effect may be lower HIV incidence, but I wonder if one indirect effect would be increased incidence of other sexually transmitted viral infections, like herpes.
Could HIV also evolve to resist immune responses brought on by the host? I know that retroviruses are prone to mutations and tend to evolve quickly.
That is such a dramatic graph! Wow…