Tanzania to start AIDS vaccine trial next March (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-12-05 14:25
Tanzania is expected to start clinically trying out an HIV/AIDS vaccine in
Dar es Salaam next March following trials done in Sweden.
Kisali Pallangyo, a senior professor at the Muhimbili University College of
Health Sciences, said that the Dar es Salaam trial is already after the
"successful trials done in Stockholm" to determine any side effects of the
vaccine.
The vaccination, whose trial is being supported by the Swedish International
Development Agency and the European Union, is a continuation of trials to
discover the vaccine's effectiveness, according to the professor who admitted
that a full preventive vaccine is not expected before 2011.
The vaccine will be administered on volunteers who are medically fit,
according to the professor.
The vaccine to be tried out in Dar es Salaam is known in medical terms as
DNA-MVA was developed under the HIV Vaccine Immunogencity Study, a European
Union-funded partnership study between Sweden and Tanzania, and targets HIV
sub-types prevalent in Tanzania.
The vaccine was said to have so far responded well to the challenges of HIV-1
retrovirus sub-type A which is prevalent in Tanzania but the vaccine does not
provide immunity from HIV though it is expected to limit HIV development once a
person is infected.
During the Dar es Salaam trials, one or more genes are directly injected into
the body to induce an immune response so that the body's defenses recognize the
AIDS virus whenever it enters the body and thus limit the effects of the virus
on the infected.
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