A trial version of an HIV vaccine will be launced in South Africa the BBC reports.
Three thousand HIV negative men and women who are sexually active will be immunised in the four-year study. An international team of researchers, led by experts from the US, will oversee the trial of the vaccine, created by the drug company Merck…The test vaccine has already been through trials for safety and immune response in the Americas, Africa and Australia. It does not contain live HIV, so cannot cause infection, but does contain copies of three HIV genes. The hope is that exposure to these genes prompts an immune response in the body so that cells containing HIV virus would be recognised and destroyed. [Read more…]
This is great progress but I just have one question. Wouldn’t the effectiveness of the vaccine need to be tested by having the participants come in contact with the virus? We don’t want that. The article informs us that “everyone will receive advice on how to practise safe sex.” But do they really want everyone to practice safe sex, because if no one gets infected how do you test the vaccine? Things that make you go hmm?
Dara, that’s a question that many people have. Every researcher in the field of HIV wants to find a way to end the epidemic. The researchers in this study have a tremendously high standard of prevention. Not only do all participants receive lots of risk reduction counseling, they will also be given male and female condoms. If participants have symptoms of sexually-transmitted diseases, they are provided with treatment, because we know that STDs make you more susceptible to HIV infection. Men in the study are offered circumcision, since research studies have demonstrated that men are less likely to become infected if they are medically circumcised (the research to determine whether circumcision of male partners reduces women’s chances of infection is still going on).
In a perfect world, everyone would use a condom every time they have sex. Researchers would love to find the perfect model of behavioral counseling that would guarantee that everyone’s behavior would change–then everyone would practice safe sex, eat healthy foods, wear seatbelts and stop smoking. But, we haven’t found the way to guarantee that everyone will change behavior all the time.
In a research study like this, no-one knows who receives the vaccine and who receives the placebo (blank). Thus, it’s really important for people to know that they need to practice safe sex. We do everything we can to reduce the chances that a participant will become infected with HIV–counseling, condoms, STD treatment, circumcision–but some people will be exposed. At the end of the study we can look at the two groups–those who received the vaccine and those who received the placebo, and if the vaccine is effective, that group will have fewer infections.
And if it turns out that we HAVE figured out the perfect counseling that makes sure that no-one is every exposed to the virus–then that’s a huge win for everyone, too.
The goal for every researcher is to find a way to end this epidemic.