AstraZeneca Paused Its COVID-19 Vaccine Trial to Perform a Safety Review. That ’s Not Bad News

AstraZeneca, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company behind one of the world’s most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates, has paused its trials due to “a single event of an unexplained illness that occurred in the UK Phase III trial,” the company announced Sept. 9. The news is disappointing, but it shows the development process is happening as it should. It is not uncommon for drug or vaccine trials to hit snags, even at advanced stages. Indeed, part of the reason vaccines go through multiple phases of testing, with increasingly large numbers of patients, is to catch rare but potentially serious side effects. “Quite often, clinical trials get paused,” says Dr. Paul Duprex, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research. “A pause in a clinical trial is a voluntary action and it basically shows that the process is working. It’s not full steam ahead, no brakes on the car, we have to get this over the finish line at all costs.” While AstraZeneca did not specify the nature of the study participant’s “unexplained illness,” an anonymous source told the New York Times that a trial participant in the U.K. was recently diagnosed with an inflammatory condition that affects the spinal cord. It is not yet clear if AstraZeneca’s vaccine was related to the diagnosis, the Times reports. AstraZeneca, which co-developed its vaccine candidate with Oxford University, called the the temporary stoppage &#...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news