The World Health Organization said that two-thirds of the world’s population under 50 may have the infectious herpes virus that causes cold sores around the mouth. This indicates a staggering 3.7 billion people under the age of 50 suffering from the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1).

This excludes the 417 million people suffering from another form of disease causing genital herpes called HSV-2 according to a WHO study.

HSV-1 causes mouth ulcers and victims usually catch them during childhood. However, it is now becoming a cause of genital herpes as well especially in first world countries. This is because improved hygiene lowers the risk to be infected during childhood. Young people who are sexually active become the target of the disease especially when performing oral sex to infected individuals.

It has been known that HSV-2 increases the risk of catching and spreading HIV, which causes AIDS and other serious complications such as Encephalitis.

Sami Gottlieb, a WHO medical officer said, “We really need to accelerate the development of vaccines against herpes simplex virus, and if a vaccine designed to prevent HSV-2 infection also prevented HSV-1, it would have far reaching benefits.”

According to Natalie Broutet, also a WHO medical officer, U.S. National Institutes of Health and other medical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc conducted trials to determine whether a preventive or therapeutic vaccine was more likely to be beneficial. GSK had conducted a previous trial vaccine but abandoned it since it did not succeed against the HSV-2 virus, says Gottlieb.

“That was interesting and promising and gave a proof of concept that these vaccines can be developed. There’s a lot of work ongoing and we are hopeful that we’ll have an HSV vaccine in the future,” Broutet added.

Genocea Biosciences recently dropped its work on a pneumonia vaccine to perform further research and studies on genital herpes.