Six-Month Human Trial Begins For Experimental Zika Vaccine - US Health Dept.

US scientists will begin conducting the first human trial of an experimental Zika vaccine with 28 adult volunteers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a press release on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th August, 2018) US scientists will begin conducting the first human trial of an experimental Zika vaccine with 28 adult volunteers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a press release on Thursday.

"Vaccinations have begun in a first-in-human trial of an experimental live, attenuated [weakened] Zika virus vaccine developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health," the release said.

The trial will enroll 28 healthy, non-pregnant adults ages 18 to 50 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school of Public Health in the state of Maryland and the Larner College of Medicine in Vermont, the release explained.

Volunteers will be monitored for one year as part of the trial, which is designed to determine whether the experimental vaccine is safe and whether it initiates an immune response, the release said.

A 2015-15 epidemic caused by the mosquito-borne virus hit South American nations, especially Brazil, with a vengeance, creating an international health emergency.

When contracted by pregnant women, the normally innocuous virus damages fetal nervous system development, leading to severe birth defects.