AstraZeneca Resumed Its COVID-19 Vaccine Trial After Pausing for Safety Review

This story has been updated to reflect AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial resuming. AstraZeneca, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company behind one of the world’s most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates, has resumed its U.K. trial after pausing it due to “a single event of an unexplained illness,” the company announced Sept. 12. While AstraZeneca did not initially 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. Following a safety review, AstraZeneca, which co-developed its vaccine candidate with Oxford University, said an independent group of investigators concluded that the U.K. trial is safe to resume. 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.” A review does not necessarily me...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news