Human Challenge Trial

[covetingthepreciousthings]

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56097088

Have seen this mentioned on the daily stats thread but couldn't see another thread about it.

The world's first Covid 19 Human Challenge trial has now been given the go ahead in the U.K.

Would anyone on here sign up to be part of this? I wonder how much you'd get paid for taking part (assuming you do)?

Human Challenge makes it sound like a game show!

I would consider signing up if I didn't have a small baby. It makes sense to trial vaccines this way and you can bet the trial participants would have better monitoring and healthcare than the general public

Absolutely I would if I wasn't already in a vaccine trial.

I would but am too old!

Apparently it's 4.5k paid over 12 months, I thought it would have been much higher.

It surprises me that it's that much. I didn't think you could be paid for medical trials in this country.

@MrsHamlet we don’t usually permit human trials of this nature either so I imagine that there a few deviations from the normal set up.

That said, I’m pretty sure people are paid for other trials but it’s strictly regulated and not particularly well paid (you couldn’t make a career out of it). The initial trials to test safety on humans (next step up from animal trials) would need more incentive than goodwill.

Happy to be corrected, I just remember that incident some years ago where a gentleman suffered a pretty extreme reaction in the initial phases of a human trial and they were paid.

The way the BBC is reporting it, it's not a vaccine trial, it's a straightforward challenge trial amonst healthy 18-30 year olds who have been tested and shown bpnit to be immune.

There may be a later trial when vaccinated individuals are challenged.

They have to crack on with this one, before the vaccination programme has rolled out so far that there are insufficient non-vaccinated adults to be able to recruit for the trial in thus country.

It's a good opportunity for those who have been saying they are happy tomtake their chances with the virus to do exactly that, and get paid for it.

Happy to be corrected, I just remember that incident some years ago where a gentleman suffered a pretty extreme reaction in the initial phases of a human trial and they were paid

I think you might mean this 2006 trial

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theralizumab

which led to changes to first-in-human trials (even smaller sentinel group, greater spacing between early recipients)

They don't get paid but apparently get up to £4.5k to compensate for lost money.

we don’t usually permit human trials of this nature either so I imagine that there a few deviations from the normal set up
Yes, we do, there are always flu challenge trials. Look up "flu camp".

@SexTrainGlue that’s the one, thank you.

It surprises me that it's that much. I didn't think you could be paid for medical trials in this country.
You can be paid for the inconvenience, not the danger. Most Phase I trials involve paid volunteers at specialist Phase I units such as Parexel (where the unfortunate incident mentioned above happened), or Richmond Pharmacology, Hammersmith Medicines Research, and several others.

Thanks @Cookerhood. I did look that up and it was really interesting.

When I first came across talk about the covid vaccine challenge trials it was mostly about the ethics of knowingly exposing people to a virus with no approved treatment and unknown long term effects. I presume that the unknowns of covid sparked that debate rather than the concept of a challenge trial then?

Yes, @Cornettoninja, when they do flu challenge studies they know they have drugs to treat it. The ethics of giving someone a virus for which there is no cure is, erm, interesting. Presumably the staff will be in full hazmat suits!

18y Dd is interested in signing up. She has no health issues and is young and healthy. She reckons she'd be more than happy to do the trial.

How very 1950s! I would sign up (but can't, too old)

That's wonderful Abraxan

tbh, all they will collect data on is what happens to the very low risk, people under 30.

They would need challenge trials in the genuinely vulnerable to get data on how to best treat the genuinely vulnerable & find out the lowest infectious dose in the highly vulnerable.

You’d think there’d be masses of MNers keen to sign up because of how mild and insignificant covid is...

@Circumlocutious

You’d think there’d be masses of MNers keen to sign up because of how mild and insignificant covid is...

That's not the reasoning for my Dd though, who has said she'd be happy to do it. She's since signed up via the nhs covid trail link, though she wasn't sure what the link would be specifically for this particular trial.

Dd saw me catch it and end up in hospital, and knows that 4 months in I'm still not fully right. She knows that covid isn't always a breeze, though her younger student friends who have had covid were lucky enough to get mild cases and, she's seen it affect people in more unpleasant ways.

@Abraxan

That’s a really lovely outcome (though it sounds awful for you!)

This trial is designed to see what the minimum dose of virus is needed to cause an infection rather than a treatment study

I wonder if minimum dose might vary by age, though. Could it be different for age 70+ than age 18-30.