Phase I SAFETY trials which will determine if the candidate vaccines are safe will be started at NIH here in Bethesda Maryland next week with 20 healthy human volunteers (similar international phase I trials may start soon). If the findings from that study determines that the candidate vaccines are safe in humans, it will then lead to phase II trials in the field - EFFICACY trials to see if the vaccines actually protects people in the field. Because of the urgency of the situation in west Africa, this is an unprecedented expedited process for a process that would normally take 5-10 years. If all goes well we might have candidate vaccines available for phase II trials by early next year. Fingers crossed to be sure that these trials pan out well. In the interim, we will have to depend on the tried and tested early diagnosis, case management, and aggressive prevention efforts to contain this outbreak. We know that historically if all the efforts are applied accordingly the outbreak will be interrupted without a doubt. The more we focus on the drug and vaccine interventions and not the tried and tested methods, the more the chances of this outbreak getting worse than it currently is. medscape/viewarticle/830595
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 04:08:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015