Thursday, December 13, 2007

AIDS

September brought lousy news from the front lines of the fight against AIDS: In clinical trials, the most promising HIV vaccine in the pipeline failed to prevent infections. But researchers hope that tactical setbacks will deliver crucial insights. "We'd be a lot happier if we were looking at why it did work," says University of Washington AIDS researcher Lawrence Corey, "but we can learn a lot from why it didn't."

The most important—and disturbing—lesson from the trial may turn out to be that the vaccine made things worse. The September tally showed that volunteers who received the vaccine were slightly more likely to become infected than were those who got dummy shots. The difference was so small that it could have been coincidence, says Corey, who heads the International HIV Vaccine Trials Network, a consortium of AIDS researchers. But that possibility won't become clearer until more data rolls in.

~Noor

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