Despite being fatter than Thai people and exposed to a different strain of HIV, 100 South Africans responded in a similar way to a vaccine that protected about a third of Thai people against HIV.
“We were really excited to see the vaccine got exactly the same (immune) responses in South Africans as in Thailand,” said Medical Research Council President Dr Glenda Gray at the inaugural HIV Research for Prevention conference that opened yesterday.
The Thai vaccine, known as RV144,31 percent of people who received it in a massive clinical trial in Thailand involving 16 400 people.
Once the Thai results were known in 2009, the global HIV research community decided that is was a priority to test the vaccine in a country with high HIV rate, Gray told Health-e News.
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