A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
The study sees ten volunteers using a gel vaccine nine times over three weeks.
The head of the investigation, Professor Charles Lacey of Hull York Medical School, said the project has received "prestigious funding" and is trying to "develop a HIV vaccine, and we think we might be able to produce the right responses by immunising women vaginally".
He said: "About ten volunteers have been involved so far and I think we could cope with about ten more."
The study is taking place in London and in York. Both are currently in their Phase 1 trials, and immunisation is hoped to be completed by the end of August. Tina Ramsey, Nurse Specialist, said it may be August 2009 before there is any “significant data”.
Ramsey said: "We're not expecting 100% efficacy, in some respects, as little as 30% can have a major impact on rates of disease, when you look at the introduction of something like smallpox it wasn’t successful in everyone immunised, but there was a dramatic reduction. If it is reduced, even by 30%, there’s 30% less people to pass it on."
She added: "If you can reduce the instance of HIV in a certain percentage of the population, then there are fewer people to affect a greater proportion."
"We may well be disappointed, but until we’ve looked at Phase 1 results and analysed that we can’t reach a conclusion."
A report yesterday in The Independent found that 85% of Aids specialists felt that time was running out to find an effective HIV vaccine. Ramsey said: “It's fair to say we’re still a long way off, but to suggest that vaccines will never find a cure is possibly a little short sighted, we’re involved in cutting edge and ground breaking research.”
Lacey said that side-effects were not likely and that the procedures are more fiddly than dangerous.
The study is using healthy women aged 18-45 who are currently using a hormonal method of conctraception.
Anyone interested should contact Tina Ramsey on Tina.ramsey@york.nhs.uk.
Think the tense of the headline is a little misleading perhaps, but good news all-round!
Does make me wonder how they test the efficacy of the vaccine in humans...
"Does make me wonder how they test the efficacy of the vaccine in humans..."
yeah; especially in just ten people. Do they give them all a little bit of HIV, half of them the gel, and see which ones get AIDS over the trial period?
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