Vaccine Trial for Women to Help Protect Against Genital Herpes

GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals announced the launch of their phase III trial, called the “HERPEVAC Trial for Women”, due to begin in November 2002. They will be joined by the US National Institute of Health (NIH), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The NIH is recruiting 7,550 US female residents, ages 18 to 30, who are seronegative for both HSV-1 and HSV-2, for this phase of the trial. It seems that the vaccine is effective in women but not in men.

Results of the two previous phase III studies are published in the November 21 2002 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Professor Lawrence Stanberry, one of the chief investigators of the earlier phase III studies and Director of the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, revealed: "The candidate herpes vaccine has demonstrated protection against genital herpes disease and a clear trend towards protection against infection has been observed in the subjects studied." Approximately 73% of women, who received the vaccine and were seronegative for HSV-1 and HSV-2 at the beginning of the trials, were protected against genital herpes.