Researchers from all over the world are studying innovative techniques to prevent the lethal effects of the HIV virus. The medical magazine Vaccine recently reported the results of research conducted by the Section of Microbiology of the University of Brescia in Italy.

The international team of researchers coordinated by Dr. Arnaldo Caruso is creating a vaccine - called AT20 - that is able to neutralize the effects of the toxic protein p17. This protein has a key role in the development of those vascular diseases, cancers, neurological alterations that can easily affect HIV+ people and lead to their death due to AIDS complications.

The vaccine doesn't have relevant side effects and eases the production of the antibodies needed to protect the HIV+ individual from the toxicity of the protein p17. What's really amazing is that 100% of the HIV+ individuals that took part in the testing phase showed an increased resistance to protein p17.

This is just an example of the many HIV related researches that are now having highly positive outcomes, which gives us a reason for being pretty optimistic for the future. Nevertheless these are still mainly experimentations to come and we still have to wait for them to become an actual ‘weapon' in the fight of the epidemic.

Another important thing to be aware of is that most of the researches are trying to find ways to cure from HIV and intervene when an infection occurs. In fact we have to keep in mind that the key point is to not getting infected in the first place, so prevention is and will remain the only way to stay healthy - no matter what is being discovered by scientists.

Still, we congratulate Dr. Caruso and his team and we wish them good luck for their amazing work!