A LAW student at Oxford Brookes University has allowed herself to be infected with typhoid for nearly £3,000 in a clinical trial.

Sian Rogers, 22, is one of about 80 people in the city currently taking part in Salmonella Typhi vaccine tests for the Oxford Vaccine Group, part of Oxford University.

The third-year student has been infected with typhoid and given one of three new vaccines to trial over 12 months. 

She became interested in the typhoid scheme after trialling a drug to combat the Ebola virus last year, during which she was injected with a dead form of the disease.

She said: "Last year it was actually pretty fun. The guys at the clinic are all really nice and it was quite funny; it was a big joke among friends that I had Ebola.

"It's also a really easy way to get money without working too hard."

In a first-person piece written for The Tab student newspaper earlier this week, Miss Rogers said she was thinking of buying a car with the £2,900 earned during the scheme.

Already she has been feeling the effects of the typhoid, a bacterial infection that she contracted by drinking a solution given to her by doctors.

She said: "They gave me a cocktail of bicarbonate of soda, bacteria and water. It was disgusting, the worst thing I have ever drunk.

"I got really sick for a week. The week before last I was really woozy and had a full day of lectures; by Tuesday I was feeling horrible and couldn't get out of bed.

"When I started feeling better I went back to work but I stood up for too long after being in bed for a week, and had to go home because my gall bladder started hurting."

The trial will end next January, after which Miss Rogers is likely to be told which of the three vaccines she had been given. 

In the meantime she will attend four to five more check-ups at the Churchill Hospital's Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine.

She also said that she was never worried about being given typhoid by researchers, adding: "I trust them."