14 DAY TRIAL // On April 25, the National Institutes of Health went public with the news that they were to halt a study aimed at researching a potential HIV vaccine.
The decision to halt this study was taken after it was discovered that the experimental shots administered to the volunteers taking part in this research failed to prevent infection.
By the looks of it, the vaccine also failed to reduce the amount of HIV found in the blood of those who had already been infected.
“The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will stop administering injections in its HVTN 505 clinical trial of an investigational HIV vaccine regimen because an independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) found during a scheduled interim review that the vaccine regimen did not prevent HIV infection nor reduce viral load (the amount of HIV in the blood) among vaccine recipients who became infected with HIV,” reads the NHI's official announcement on this issue.
The study now put on hold debuted back in 2009, and enrolled a total of 2,504 volunteers.
The volunteers were either men who engaged in intimate relations with other men, or transgender people who also had intimate relations with men.