THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160537
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 33 lines
The Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine will be a test site for federal government studies on contraception, Eastern Virginia Medical School announced Thursday.
The Jones Institute, which is part of the medical school, was one of nine sites in the United States selected for future trials by the National Institutes of Health. The trials will be handled by the Jones Institute's Clinical Research Unit.
The decision means the research unit will be a preferred site for clinical trials for the next five years, school officials said. Projects will concern efforts to avoid pregnancy and sexual transmission of diseases, with a special focus on preventing the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
Grants from the NIH are increasingly difficult to get. School officials said it's not clear yet how much money the federal agency will spend on the trials in Norfolk. The new designation also may attract more private research grants.
The Jones Institute and other sites were selected after an open competition. Criteria included accuracy of record-keeping, ability to recruit people to participate and capacity to handle all the technical elements of the research.
The Jones Institute's Clinical Research Unit already has about 400 women enrolled in 32 studies on women's health. The topics include birth control, pelvic inflammatory disease, preventing pre-term labor, hormone replacement therapy and osteoporosis. by CNB