Eight volunteers involved in trials of an AIDS vaccine in
southwest China's Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region received results from their final
blood tests and physical checkups at the regional disease control
and prevention center over the weekend, with no side effects
reported.
"We have initially demonstrated the vaccine's safety on the
selected eight individuals," Liu, the center's HIV/AIDS department
director, told China Daily yesterday in a telephone
interview, " But we still need further research to see if
antibodies have developed in them."
She said it was too early to call the trial a success,
contradicting some Chinese media reports, and that the results are
still being analyzed.
Altogether, 49 volunteers, aged from 18 to 50, are participating
in the first trials of their kind in China, she said.
The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) approved the initial
clinical trial last November. The eight volunteers, four each women
and men, were injected with either the vaccine or a control
solution on March 12 in a "double-blind" test, where neither
volunteers nor administering doctors know who received which.
International AIDS vaccine research began in the 1980s, and
since the first trial started in 1987, over 50 candidate vaccines
have been studied in more than 70 government-funded clinical
trials. None has so far proven to be applicable.
(China Daily September 13, 2005)