Vaccine Trial Stopped

One of the promising vaccine trials in the UK, the Oxford University vaccine, has been put on hold according to news reports today.

Late-stage trials for a leading coronavirus vaccine have been suspended after a study participant suffered a "potentially unexplained illness".

AstraZeneca has put on hold phase three trials of a vaccine being developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-...eneca/12643812

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

Since posting the news above some details have started to leak out about why the trial was halted at least temporarily

The health news website STAT reports that it was a serious adverse reaction of some sort, but that the patient is expected to recover.

Meanwhile, the New York Times quotes a source saying the patient had transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord linked to abnormal immune responses.

That's plausible, according to Professor Terry Nolan from the University of Melbourne.

"Transverse myelitis is a disease of unknown cause, thought to be possibly auto-immune in nature," he says.

That places it on a likely watchlist of diseases to monitor when trialling any new vaccine.

Let's hope this turns out to be a minor set back because this is not what we want to hear.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/...lysis/12644626

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

There have been pauses before, only this one for some reason has made the headlines. Pausing often happens during trials and this particular pause is not exceptional and was to be expected at some stage during the trail period.

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

I'm no expert on vaccines (obviously) but I always thought they just injected a dead version of the virus. Obviously there is more to it than I thought.

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

I did think there must be something wrong with the participant.

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

Some are live but weakened so they cannot reproduce. This one works in a different way using a similar looking but pretty harmless virus to replicate genetic code :

https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/Articl...vid-19-vaccine

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

Scaremongering! The trials have been restarted according to this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...egulators.html

Re: Vaccine Trial Stopped

Some good news:

Oxford University has announced it will resume a trial for a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca after getting the green light from safety watchdogs.

The late-stage trials of the experimental vaccine were suspended last week following a reported side-effect in a UK patient.

In a statement, the university confirmed the restart across all of its UK clinical trial sites.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-...trial/12658984