January 5, 2012 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS The Herpevac Trial for
Women Updated January 5, 2012 The Herpevac trial for women is a
clinical study investigating a vaccine to protect women against
genital herpes disease. The trial, which began in 2002 and
concluded in 2010, was conducted at 50 sites in the United
States and Canada and was sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
Biologicals in cooperation with the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH. The
study chair is Robert Belshe, M.D., director of the Center for
Vaccine Development at the Saint Louis University School of
Medicine in Missouri. The Herpevac Trial for Women involved
8,323 women ages 18-30. At the time of their enrollment, the
study participants were free of the two common types of herpes
simplex viruses (HSV): HSV-1, the primary cause of cold sores
and an increasing cause of genital herpes, and HSV-2, the common
cause of genital herpes. Approximately 31,000 women were
screened in order to identify eligible partic