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Aids Vaccine:(USA & THai Research):-
First AIDS vaccine shows encouraging results in clinical trials is only modestly effective and did not protect those most at risk of HIV, it emerged today, and the United States and Thai researchers revealed the results fully in Paris.

Announcement last month that the controversial $ 105m (£ 64m) trial conducted in Thailand have succeeded unexpectedly taken by surprise, and the excitement of the archaeologists around the world amid speculation that the steady spread of HIV / AIDS and can be verified before the passage of a long time.

However, it is now clear that this is a long way wide of the mark.

The full results, presented at the AIDS Vaccine Conference in Paris, and published on the Internet immediately by the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that:

• The vaccine does not protect those at high risk of HIV infection, such as sex workers and injecting drug users.

• The greatest protective effect in the first 12 months and then seem to fade.

• When those who did not get all six shots of the vaccine have been taken out of the analysis, the positive result was small from a statistical standpoint.

Some scientists and advocates in Paris, however, praised the results, if not as a triumph, then as a beacon of hope. Dr. Michael Nelson of the U.S. Army - The U.S. military may run research program with the Thai government - said scientists will now have to work intensively to pick up clues to the development of AIDS vaccine in the future outcome of the trial. "It's a warning sign for developing a vaccine," he said. "This was a yes, we can not for the moment: a chance to become enthusiastic. I broke down the door, and we are all going to try to collectively through this incident."

But Seth Berkley, President of the International Initiative for AIDS vaccine, which evaluates and channels funds to the trials, said he thought the test system in Thailand will take anywhere else. The vaccines work - AidsVax, which had already failed in a trial in Thailand on its own, and Alvac - was 15 years old.

"For this reason there was a scientific controversy about the start of this trial," he said. "If they were going to start again, you may use one of vaccines more power we have [in the laboratory] today.

"We do not have a vaccine on the horizon, and not on the Thai one, or one of the others, and for this reason we must be patient for this marathon rather than the enemy."

Thai trial, given the RV144 name, was controversial from the outset because it involves two vaccines were given together, one of which had already failed to protect people from HIV while the other has not been tested alone. Many people felt in the $ 105m that it could be better in terms of cost spent.

More than 16,400 Thai men and women aged between 18 and 30 who do not have HIV were recruited and randomly assigned to receive vaccine or placebo. They were given six shots over six months: two of Alvac followed by two more have been injected with each of the vaccines. Was to test HIV every six months, and advice on how to avoid it over the next three years.

By the end of the trial, only 125 people were infected with HIV. To announce key findings in the past month, it was said that 51 of those given the vaccine, HIV has become positive, compared with 74 in the placebo group, which gives statistically the effectiveness of 31%.

But many of the volunteers did not get all six vaccines, with the figures, down from about 8,000 in each group to about 6,000. Among these people, there were 50 on infection and placebo, and 36 on the vaccine, which gives the effective rate of 26% but not statistically significant, meaning it could happen by chance