Researchers have made a huge step forward in fighting AIDS virus by announcing that a cheap, commonly-used compound shielded monkeys from a lethal cousin of HIV.
The study was the work of researchers at the University of Minnesota and was published in the journal Nature. The compound they tested is called glycerol monolaurate, or GML, and is already licensed as an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agent and is used in cosmetics and food products.
The researchers tested GML on a group of monkeys, applying it to the female sexual organs of five of the primates. Another four animals got a gel without GML. Then the monkeys were exposed to a large dose of SIV, the primate version of HIV.
At the end of the experiment, the four animals not given GML got AIDS. The monkeys treated with GML showed no sign of infection during the short-term study, although one of them showed signs of infection several months later.
“The results are very encouraging. They point to a novel avenue to prevent sexual transmission of HIV. GML could be part of a combined strategy with another vaginal microbicide, such as PRO 2000, with a different mechanism of action,” study researchers Ashlet T. Haase, MD, head of microbiology department at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, said.
Recent studies on GML, a compound found in breast milk, show that it kills many different kinds of germs – including vaginal yeast infections and several different sexually transmitted diseases, according to Haase’s colleagues Patrick Schlievert, professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota, said.
“GML is presently being considered as an additive to tampons because of its ability to interfere with bacterial growth, including the bacteria that cause toxic shock syndrome,” Schlievert added.
Now the researchers want to begin studies that will confirm the compound works and to try to find doses that “are more applicable to the real world,” Haase said.
If the compound proves effective in humans too, many cases of HIV worldwide will be avoided. Most of the HIV infections worldwide are contracted vaginally. Condoms can block the virus. However, when women want to get pregnant they don’t use them and risk infection from their partners, researchers say.
There will be another positive outcome if GML works in people too. Being a very cheap ingredient, every woman will be able to buy it and thus to avoid infection with HIV. The compound would cost less than a cent for each dose for a woman, Schlievert said.
About 33 million people worldwide are infected with the virus and 2.7 million new cases were reported in 2007, according to UNAIDS. Over three quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, which remains the epicenter of the global malady. Researchers believe the virus originated in this region during the twentieth century. The virus that has killed more than 25 million people since being identified in 1981, including 330,000 children is spread in blood, semen, breast milk and other bodily fluids. The number of deaths dropped about 10 percent to 2 million in 2007, according to UNAIDS.
