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Herpevac Trial Essay

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The Herpevac trial was a randomized, double-blind study done by Belshe et. al (2012) was conducted on HSV-1 and HSV-2 seronegative women. The trial consisted of a HSV-2 vaccine (GlaxoSmithKline) containing a glycoprotein D from the virus verses an inactivated hepatitis A vaccine (Havrix, GlaxoSmithKline) as the control. This trial was used to test the theory of two other HSV-2 vaccine tests among discordinant couples. The Herpevac vaccine was inept against the virus after two doses of the vaccine, with an overall efficacy of 20%. Despite being ineffectual against HSV-1 and HSV-2, the vaccine did provide some protection against infection. However, this protective effect was observed mainly with HSV-1, not with HSV-2. HSV-2 antibodies were detected after the second dose of the vaccine, but fell to undetectable levels by the 6 month of the study. A third dose was administered; the levels were detectable again, but fell soon to undetectable ranges soon after. Another study done by Delgrave et. al (2012) studied the efficacy of using ACAM529, a replication-defective vaccine against HSV-2 administered intramuscularly instead of a subcutaneous injection or intradermal injection. Studies done previously with the replication-defective vaccine showed immunogenic results during HSV-2 challenge and decreased …show more content…

al., attempted to address the issue of not only finding protective antigens against HSV-2 but delivering them in a way that activates the immune system. A therapeutic vaccine, HerpV, is a rodent equivalent heat shock protein based vaccine. Mo et. al study of HerpV consisted of 32 synthetic HSV-2 derived peptides, which covers all phases of the viral life cycle, used on HSV naive and HSV-2 induced mice and guinea pigs. In the tests with naive mice, HerpV was used as an immunization with the mice followed by a live HSV-2 challenge. Results were not statistically significant, but a measureable immune response did

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