Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — The failure of an experimental AIDS vaccine trial two years ago may have been caused by the common cold virus.
The test was canceled after volunteers who got the shots were more likely to become infected with HIV than those who got a dummy shot.
The problem may have been using the common adenovirus to carry HIV material, researchers report in today’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Adenovirus is so widespread that many people have previously been exposed to it. The researchers said that prior exposure resulted in mucus membranes producing large numbers of immune cells to fight off the adenovirus. But those are also the cells that HIV infects, providing a ready place for the AIDS virus to grow.
