HIV vaccine promise

My uncle once joked that this blog should be called 'reasons to be cautiously optimistic'! Well, that moniker could well apply to today's linked article from the Bangkok Post. The world's largest and longest HIV vaccine trial - conducted in Thailand - has just released some promising outcomes, showing that trial participants who received the experimental vaccine were 31% less likely to be infected with HIV over the 6 year trial period than those who received a placebo. So, not good enough to use more widely - but the kind of modest success that could yield significant clues as to what might work better. And with more focused research we may just get an HIV vaccine that bit quicker. Definitely a reason to be cautiously optimistic...