| Summary: | Antiretroviral therapies combining three or more compounds frequently diminish the viral load (VL) in blood to undetectable levels (< 50 copies of RNA/mL), being considered as optimal. In contrast, more than 100 clinical studies with different vaccine candidates have barely achieved modest results and some studies have been discouraging. Therapies are, however, unable to eliminate viral infection. At the same time, they are a threat to the health of patients because of the accumulated toxicity derived from their prolonged use. Many researchers, therefore, believe that an effective (or even partially effective) vaccine might substitute therapies, eliminating the virus or at least controlling the VL through immune-mediated mechanisms. However, immune correlates for protection remain unknown requiring a strategy to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of vaccine candidates. Hence, the experience accumulated with therapies is highly valuable. This paper gives an update on some of the main results of antiretroviral therapies and therapeutic vaccination, giving recommendations in the field of vaccination against HIV-1.
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