Springfield research is pointing to hope for those with herpes. An instructor at the medical school has been developing a herpes vaccine, which has passed a clinical trial.
Chances are, he says, you either have a form of herpes, or you know someone who does.
“It’s an important aspect of infectious disease,” says Dr. Bill Halford, an associate professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. “For that matter, people who get genital herpes have a threefold higher risk of getting AIDS. A lot of them give birth to babies who get the infection at the time of childbirth and die of encephalitis. It’s really a much bigger deal than most lay people realize.”
Halford says there should be no more shame in having herpes than in having the chicken pox.
“About four billion people on earth are infected with HSV (herpes simplex virus) 1 or HSV 2, so we are talking about an incredibly common infection,” he says.
www.liveherpesvaccine.com
