Cohort Study of Volunteers That Have Participated to Preventive HIV-1 Vaccine Trials

Since 1992, 16 phase I and II clinical trials have been performed by the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS) evaluating the safety of several HIV-1 vaccine candidates and their capacity to induce immune responses. The ANRS program has evaluated a recombinant HIV-1 envelope protein Rgp-160, canarypox ALVAC vectors, and mixtures of lipopeptides whose sequences represent CTL-epitopes of HIV-1 Gag, Pol and Nef proteins. Most of them have been administered intramuscularly but recently, mucosal immunization and intradermal route were used. Previously compiled in a published meta-analysis, safety studies were restricted to the duration of the trials.

ANRS establishes a cohort study in order to describe the long-term safety of preventive HIV-vaccines administered in phase I and II clinical trials to healthy volunteers of the "ANRS volunteer-network" in France and to gather clinical and biological data in a database and blood specimen collection which could be analysed in case of a long-term safety issue in ANRS vaccine trials or if pertinent, in other HIV vaccine trials ANRS COV1-COHVAC is a prospective, multicentric cohort study composed of participants in preventive HIV-vaccines phase I and II trials. All ANRS volunteers who ever received one dose of a candidate vaccine are eligible and those who are going to complete their participation to a clinical trial during the cohort study time.

The ANRS COV1-COHVAC project relies on a long-term follow-up of the cohort (at least 7 years after the end of the vaccine trial), that includes the retrospective and prospective collection of medical and biological data [severe health events (grade 3-4), as well as neurological, ophtalmological, and immunological events (any grade), starting from the first injection of a candidate vaccine, are recorded], blood specimen collections and psycho-behavioral evaluations (self-questionnaires and interviews) in order to collect data about consequences of participation and experience of possible HIV vaccine-induced seropositivity in such trials.

Of the ANRS "volunteer-network", 206 participants have been involved in the early trials and are actually eligible to participate in this cohort. Altogether with the more recent studies completed or in progress, the cohort will comprise at least 400 individuals in 2009.