Preclinical assessment of HIV vaccines and microbicides by repeated low-dose virus challenges.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Trials in macaque models play an essential role in the evaluation of biomedical interventions that aim to prevent HIV infection, such as vaccines, microbicides, and systemic chemoprophylaxis. These trials are usually conducted with very high virus challenge doses that result in infection with certainty. However, these high challenge doses do not realistically reflect the low probability of HIV transmission in humans, and thus may rule out preventive interventions that could protect against "real life" exposures. The belief that experiments involving realistically low challenge doses require large numbers of animals has so far prevented the development of alternatives to using high challenge doses.

Methods and findings

Using statistical power analysis, we investiga

SUBMITTER: Regoes RR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1176242 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature