Word: hiv
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...complete, published study results, which include three analyses of the data, suggest that the experimental vaccine may be far less effective than the authors had originally indicated. The vaccine appears to have been slightly more protective among low- or average-HIV-risk participants than among high-risk individuals, like sex workers or intravenous drug users, and its effect appears to wane after the first year. (See TIME's photo-essay "Access to Life...
...scientists develop a workable AIDS vaccine - a goal that has eluded them for more than two decades. "Having this signal - even if it's weak and even if we're debating whether it's a real signal or not - is a source of great hope," said Nicole Frahm, an HIV specialist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, while attending the annual AIDS vaccine conference in Paris this week. "Up until now, we've had nothing. This holds the promise of a start...
Overall, the study found that the two-vaccine approach was 31% effective in preventing HIV infection: 51 of the roughly 8,200 people who had been inoculated eventually acquired HIV, compared with 74 people in the placebo group. The analysis that resulted in the 31% figure, however, included study participants who became infected with HIV before the trial concluded and did not complete the entire vaccination schedule; it also factored out participants who were discovered to have been HIV-positive before the trial began. At a press conference at the Paris meeting, Dr. Nelson L. Michael, a virologist with...
...Some researchers contend that the second and third analyses of the data - including the "per protocol" analysis, which included only the 12,450 volunteers who received all six vaccine or placebo injections and completed the trial and the "intent to treat" analysis, which included everyone except the previously HIV-infected participants - show that the results are not statistically significant. Both analyses found the vaccine to be just 26% effective - that figure is empirically low, but further, the analyses relegate the finding to statistical insignificance, meaning the results feasibly could have been due to pure chance. (See pictures of Africa...
Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, suggests that the debate over which analysis of the data matters most - as well as the rather clumsy manner in which the study was presented to the public - is secondary to what the research brings to the battle against HIV. "Let's not get hung up on tangential concerns, and stay focused on everyone's main priority: working our way toward getting a vaccine," Bernstein says. "This trial isn't the big bang. It isn't perfect, and [it] has only provided points of information that must be examined, pursued...