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Published online 19 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.609
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Anti-HIV gel trial fails
First anti-HIV microbicide to make it to the end of a clinical trial proves ineffective.
Carraguard, the first anti-HIV microbicide to make it to the end of phase III clinical trials has failed to prevent transmission of HIV.
The seaweed-derived vaginal gel microbicide was tested in 6,202 women in South Africa.
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I protest this research to continue to run trials on people from Africa or from any other countries. This is a crime to human. Total 185 new women in South Africa were infectied by HIV now. Please stop and come back to run new trials on animal with your combined product, PC-815.
Its not a good practice to use humans for this type of clinical trials, who were infected with dangerous infections like HIV. Scintists should think of some other alternatives. Why should the healthy subjects sacrify their whole life for the tests like this?
I am not recommending this type of clinical trials. If you do it, you can select the patients with cancer or other deadly diseases (Means the patients with sever cancer) with their permission only. Please follow humanity, before any clinical trails. Dr. S. Thippeswamy, India
I disagree with the thought that such a trial is unethical. Currently, the most effective preventative is the use of condoms and all of the participants in this study were provided with these. Those that contracted HIV are likely to have unprotected sex. I believe that a trial using already ill patients would be extremely unethical! How can we morally infect such people with such a horrendous virus such as HIV. Trials such as those described in this article aim to prevent the contraction of HIV and do not infect people with the virus.
It is very unlikely and pathetic to hear this kind of research on human. They could have tested in test animals not on human. Will they give life back to those victims? WHO will not bother about this kind of research on human?
Note that the participants in this trial are at risk of being infected even if they had not participated. As a hint, the rate of transmission in the placebo arm represents the rate of transmission the individuals in the treatment arm would have had they not received the drug, arguably close to the population rate. In fact, the provision of condoms plus the information the participants should receive plus the fact that they are participating in the trial are expected to make the participants more health-conscious and aware of the risk of transmission, and thus encourage safe sexual practices whenever possible. Therefore, the participation in the study itself can be protective, whatever arm subjects are assigned to. In addition, the participation in the trial ensures some kind of medical care that, most likely, the participants would not have access to otherwise. As a technical point, studies need to be conducted in a setting where there is a relatively high transmission rate, if we are interested in having results in a reasonable timeframe, so that they are practically useful.