New York: Merck, US pharmaceutical company has stopped examinations of an anti-AIDS vaccine after an analysis proved it ineffectual.

The conclusion is seen as a delay for the cause of battling the wide-reaching AIDS outbreak as the vaccine known V520 was primarily billed as predicting.

In a statement, the company said, “The independent Data Safety Monitoring Board ... reviewed safety data and results of an interim efficacy analysis of the study, and recommended that vaccination be discontinued because the ... trial will not meet its efficacy endpoints.”

The company commented that a temporary efficiency study was carried out on the about 1,500 volunteers indicated that the vaccine did not stop infection.

The company said that twenty-four cases of HIV infection were found in the 741 volunteers who had the vaccine and 21 cases of HIV infection were found in the 762 partakers in the placebo group.

Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories. Said, “We share in the disappointment of the research and HIV communities today. “Sadly, developing an effective AIDS vaccine remains one of the most challenging tasks facing modern medicine.”