Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - February 20, 2005
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
Supachai Rerks-ngarm, project director and principal investigator at the Disease Control Department, said organisers behind the Prime-Boost HIV Vaccine Phase III Trial were confident they would meet the first step of recruiting 16,000 volunteers this year. About 10,000 people have been participating in the trial which began in 2003.
The United States-funded, five-year project, which is in its third and the most important stage, aims to find 16,000 volunteers in Chon Buri and Rayong after six months of screening.
But the difficulty of finding people has delayed the trial, resulting in the recruitment process being extended until September this year.
All volunteers aged 20 to 30 live in the two eastern provinces. Half have been getting injections of two combination vaccines _ canary pox vaccine Alvac and a synthesised combination of the B and E sub-types of the Aids virus AidsVax.
The first one is produced by the French pharmaceutical firm, Aventis Pasteur, and the other is made by California-based biotechnology firm VaxGen.
The B subtype of Aids is common among intravenous drug users, while the E subtype is mainly transmitted sexually.
Under the plan, half the total volunteers will get four doses of the trial vaccine over six months, with the rest getting placebo injections.
Dr Supachai said participants must strictly follow the injection schedule to ensure the outcome of the trial will be accurate.
The previous study of single candidate vaccine AidsVax among 2,546 injecting drug users visiting the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's rehabilitation clinics during 1999-2003 failed to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids or slow the progress of the disease among those who received the vaccine but later became infected with HIV.
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