HIV Vaccine Long Way Off

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Saturday that it will take a long time to battle AIDS into a low-rate of infection, and that the elimination of the disease seems unlikely.

Because the disease is transmitted via such a fundamental component of human behavior as sexual activity, it is going to be very hard to "shut it off," he said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Currently there are 40,000 new HIV infections in the United States each year, and 4.3 million new infections around the world, AP reports.

As many as one in four Americans with HIV don't know they are infected, Fauci said. Because people who know they have the disease are less likely to spread it to others, it's very important for infected people to get diagnosed and treated. Current triple-drug treatment can't eliminate the disease, but it can reduce the amount of virus in the system sharply, thereby reducing the risk of transmission.

Several promising new drugs are in the pipeline, among them drugs that block fusion of the virus with human immune cells and others that may prevent the virus from maturing, Fauci said.