HIV Vaccine – level 3

07-02-2020 15:00

An HIV vaccine clinical trial started in 2016 in South Africa to see if vaccine HVTN 702 could prevent HIV-negative volunteers from developing HIV. HVTN 702 was based on a clinical trial from Thailand which has shown protection from HIV.

On January 23, a safety monitoring board found that 129 people who received the vaccine had HIV, and 123 people who received a placebo also had HIV. Since it did not appear that the vaccine stopped HIV from developing, the board said that it was ineffective.

One of the people who worked on the vaccine said that people will continue to work on preventing HIV in South Africa and around the world. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world.

Difficult words: vaccine clinical trial (an experiment to test if a medicine – a vaccine – can cure an illness), safety monitoring board (a special group that determines if something is safe), placebo (a medicine that experimenters use to test if another medicine does the job it is supposed to do).

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