Lisa Power

The world's largest HIV vaccine trial ever conducted tested a combination of two vaccines on over 16,000 volunteers in Thailand. The study was an international collaboration involving the Thai and U.S governments, plus private companies and voluntary organisations. Participants were male and female, HIV negative and within the 18-30 age group.

The results show that the combination vaccine resulted in a 31% lower rate of HIV infection than those in the control group who received no treatment.

The trial tested the 'prime-boost' combination of two vaccines: ALVAC-HIV® vaccine (the prime), and AIDSVAX® B/E vaccine (the boost). The vaccine combination was based on HIV strains that commonly circulate in Thailand and was designed to test the vaccine strategy’s ability to prevent HIV infection, as well as its ability to reduce the amount of HIV in the blood (viral load) of those who became infected after they enrolled in the study.

Lisa Power, Head of Policy at Terrence Higgins Trust, said:
"This is very good news for the future. While this trial only protected people 30% of the time, it gives us a good idea of where to concentrate our research in the future. For now, of course, the best protection if you're having sex is still a condom."

At present it is unclear whether the vaccine would work against other strains of the virus outside of Thailand.

Vicky Sheard of THT said:
"This is the first step on a very long road. There's a lot of research needed into how a vaccine can be rolled out, how costly it's going to be, whether it's going to be effective against different strains."
 
For more information about THT view:
www.tht.org.uk