New Delhi, March 14 (IANS) India decided to continue the AIDS vaccine trial to find its impact on its population which is ethnically different from Europe, where the results proved less encouraging, parliament was informed Friday. Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Panabaka Lakshmi said that the phase 1 vaccine trial of Adeno-associated virus (AAV) was initiated at National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) in Pune on Feb 2005.

Thirty volunteers participated in the trial and all the trial participants were followed up for one year.

After the first phase, the second round of the trial was started after the results from the Phase 1 trials were received from Belgium and Germany. The data from Belgium and Germany showed that vaccine was safe and well tolerated.

However, no significant immune response was reported.

“These results were reviewed by the national scientific and ethics committees and it was decided that although the results from the two countries showed that the vaccine is only weekly immunogenic, different results could be expected from Indian populations due to ethnic differences,” she said.

Hence the trial in Pune was allowed to continue, she added.