HIV vaccine trial shut down after results show it does not work
Kathmandu, February 5
The National Institutes of Health stopped its HVTN 702 trial, of more than 5,000 people in South Africa, after it found that the vaccine did not prevent HIV.
As per the ABC News, the latest attempt at an HIV vaccine has failed, with researchers announcing they have stopped giving the experimental shots in a major study.
The study had enrolled more than 5,400 people since 2016 in South Africa, a country with one of the world's highest HIV rates.
The BBC reported that the jab was a new version of the first HIV-vaccine candidate shown to provide some protection against the virus - in the RV144 clinical trial, in Thailand. There are many different strains of HIV and the vaccine had been adapted to the subtype most common in South Africa.
There were great hopes that the vaccine would work and it could then be adapted to cover other strains of HIV circulating in other parts of the world. However, last month, monitors checked how the study was going and found 129 HIV infections had occurred among the vaccine recipients compared with 123 among those given a dummy shot, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
"An HIV vaccine is essential to end the global pandemic and we hoped this vaccine candidate would work. Regrettably, it does not," NIH infectious diseases chief Anthony Fauci was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
