Latest Attempt to Block HIV: Stronger Vaginal Gels
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

HEALTHBEAT: Testing AIDS drugs in vaginal gels, films is latest move to protect women from HIV

Try after try to make vaginal creams that could repel the AIDS virus have failed. Now researchers are testing if a drug used to treat HIV infection finally might give women a tool to prevent it — by infusing the medicine into vaginal gels and contraceptive-style rings.

Even quick-dissolving anti-HIV films are being created, the same style now used for breath-fresheners or allergy medicines but made for fingertip application in the vagina.

Called microbicides, this kind of woman-controlled protection is considered key to battling the HIV epidemic — especially in developing countries where the virus is at its worst and women too often can't get their partners to use a condom.

For two decades, scientists tried less powerful medications in disappointing microbicide attempts. Results from the first study to see if this new strategy works — South African women tested a gel made of the AIDS drug tenofovir — aren't due until July.

But researchers gathering for the biennial International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh next weekend express cautious optimism.

"Frankly, blocking transmission of the virus appears to be a lot harder than anyone understood it would be at the beginning," says meeting co-chair Dr. Sharon Hillier of the University of Pittsburgh and a principal investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network.

"The reason we're not depressed in the microbicide world? We actually have learned a lot and moved on to think about potent drugs and really cool delivery methods."

Antiretroviral drugs have revolutionized AIDS care, helping people live far longer with the virus. They've also successfully lowered the risk that an infected pregnant woman passes HIV to her child. So it was logical for scientists to begin testing whether swallowing an antiretroviral drug every day could protect the still healthy, both men and women, from getting infected. More than half a dozen studies of this so-called pre-exposure prophylaxis are under way among high-risk populations around the world, largely using the drug tenofovir because it tends to cause fewer side effects than many other AIDS drugs. READ MORE

Additional Media Coverage:
This article garnered coverage in 77 different publications, including USA Today and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

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