AboutDr. Ravindra Bhaskar Ghooi Expertise I can provide information on drugs and medicines, their actions, uses, interactions and adverse effects. To avoid confusion, generic names of
medicines may please be provided. I am a pharmacologist, having worked
on animal and human pharmacology, and presently I am the Dean of Bilcare Research Academy, where we teach courses on clinical research. We dont work on saturdays and sundays, hence questions reachng me on these days will be replied on Monday, please bear with me.
Question Sir, we give live attenuated vaccine ex. for polio to generate immunity against that virus. Can we do the same with HIV?? Although this virus changes its configurations, but as like influenza H1, H3, H5 can we identify every configuration of HIV, and accordingly give it as a live attenuated vaccine??
Answer Hi Sagar,
There are some condictions for using live attenuated vaccines:
1. Attenuated vaccines should have very low infectivitiy (even polio has an infection rate of about 1/1000,000.
2. The virus should not be know to mutate (HIV does, so does influenza)
3. The attenuated virus should retain antigenicity (we dont know much about other viruses)
4. Attenuated virs should be easy to produce and transport.
If all these attributes ar present in a virus, it can become a candidate for making a live attentuated vaccine.
Ravi Ghooi
