Tag : Vaccine

Washington: Rutgers University's top health researchers are calling for a change in approach to developing COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines to fight future pandemics to incorporate both conventional and challenging trials. The commentary by bioethicist Nir Eyal and epidemiologists Tobias Gerhard and Brian Strom (the latter is chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences) -- published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety -- examines how this parallel approach to vaccine trials can lead to faster and more accurate vaccine assessment and more effective pandemic response. Conventional randomized controlled trials are where participants receive a vaccine or placebo and then may or may not be exposed as they continue with their lives over the course of the months that follow. Human challenge vaccine trials are where participants receive a vaccine or placebo and are then artificially exposed to the virus. The researchers say that further vaccine testing could help settle remaining questions about how effective the shots are at blocking infection against old and new virus strains. It could also reveal the most effective dosing and timing between shots, the level of protection compared to natural immunity and how well vaccines work in groups that were underrepresented in initial trials. While some researchers proposed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that challenge trials take place, others argued that too little was known about the virus and that conducting the trials would be too dangerous. They were not used for the studies that led to the approval of the major COVID-19 vaccines but are now being used in testing. "The vigorous discussions about vaccine trial designs in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, unfor ...