An Ebola vaccine that is currently in a clinical trial suffers a setback.
This experimental vaccine, with a license from NewLink Genetics to Merck, is tested in a Geneva hospital. It had to be stopped for a while after 4 volunteers experienced joint pains, as announced by the facility by Thursday, December 11.
This vaccine is one of those tested. The other from GlaxoSmithKline is also undergoing clinical trial in National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. (The same vaccine in Geneva is also being tested here.) This facility became more well-known when it treated Nina Pham, one of the two nurses that had been infected by the virus after taking care of Eric Thomas Duncan, the Liberian who traveled to the United States. He died a few days after he was admitted in a Texas hospital.
The team who is currently overseeing the Merck vaccine trial, nevertheless, mentioned that this type of reaction is normal during vaccination and that it should not be considered as a major setback.
In the clinical trial, the team obtained 59 volunteers who worked closely with them since the early weeks of November. They had already informed them that they might have some reactions including fever and muscle pain, which some of them did in as early as a few hours after getting the vaccine. However, 4 of them complained of mild pains in the joints of the hands and feet at least 10 days after the vaccination, which the researchers didn't anticipate to happen.
They are therefore stopping it for a while and resuming on January 5, 2015, to give them enough time to update the potential side effects of the vaccine.
In the end, if this vaccine turns out to be okay, it shall then be tested in West Africa, which greatly suffered from the Ebola outbreak sometime next year.
Aside from the institute in the United States, the vaccine is also tested in Canada, Gabon, and Germany. So far, there are no reports of the same side effect in these places.