The chief of the U.S. agency to control the spread of infectious disease on Thursday hailed as an important breakthrough a new AIDS vaccine that reduces the risk of HIV infection by one-third. “These new findings represent an important step forward in HIV vaccine research,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the infectious-disease unit at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which provided major funding and support for the study. “For the first time, an investigational HIV vaccine has demonstrated some ability to prevent HIV infection among vaccinated individuals,” Fauci said in a statement. “Additional research is needed to better understand how this vaccine regimen reduced the risk of HIV infection, but certainly this is an encouraging advance for the HIV vaccine field.” The experimental AIDS vaccine test— the world's biggest medical trial, involving more than 16,000 people—was carried out by Thailand's Ministry of Public Health and the U.S. Army. The breakthrough came after years of fruitless attempts by the medical world to find an HIV vaccine. The vaccine was tested on volunteers—all HIV-negative men and women aged 18 to 30—at average risk of infection in two Thai provinces near Bangkok starting in late 2003. Half received the vaccine and the rest were given a placebo. Of the placebo recipients, 74 of 8,198 became infected compared with 51 of 8,197 who got the vaccine.
