Health Article

In one of the most promising developments in more than 20 years, scientists say that drugs used to control HIV / AIDS in the patients may also effective in preventing the disease in the first place.

The drug in question tenofovir (Viread) and emtricitabine, FTC (Emtriva), in combination as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is the California company known for the invention of Tamiflu.

The research was on the search for a vaccine against HIV / AIDS, with the intention to air-conditioning the immune system against the disease. But these drugs work differently. They simply keep the virus from reproducing, and has already been successfully used by medical workers to prevent them from getting infected by the virus, of the patients.

This approach to the fight against HIV / AIDS researchers was tempting for many years, but has only recently been possible, preventive drugs have been developed that are safe for non-infected persons should be taken. Previous drugs had unreasonable consequences for the non-infected people.

This situation changed with tenofovir came on the market in 2001. Tenofovir is powerful and safe, and there must be only once a day. It has also not with other medicines or birth pill, and manifested less resistance than other AIDS drugs drugs.

Monkey studies show exciting results

A large study by the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) in Atlanta, Georgia, the six macaques. The monkeys were given a combination of tenofovir and FTC, and then administered a lethal combination of monkey and human AIDS viruses. They were given the virus in rectal doses to simulate contact between gay men.

Each received 14 weekly exposure to the virus, and none of the monkeys became infected. In a control group who do not have the drugs, all but one got the disease, usually after only two claims.

The scientists then stopped, the drug in the group test, to see if the prevention was only temporary. The results were equally impressive. None of the monkeys by the disease. "We are now four months after the animals no drugs, no virus. You are not infected and healthy, "said a CDC researcher.

Now for other research teams insist that this combination tested on humans. A $ 29 million CDC study of drug users in Botswana is now on this new combination.

Another study of 400 heterosexual women in Ghana by Family Health Initiative, and financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is studying the effects of tenofovir alone.

But some other studies did not materialize because studies of this nature immediately suspected that the scientists with the local population as guinea pigs. The fear is that they intentionally expose the volunteers to the virus.

The cost of tenofovir and Truvada also testing difficult. In the African countries, condoms are now generous donations from companies that help the organizations of the United Nations and Western governments. While the drugs are comparatively cheap, the cost remains an obstacle.

Yet researchers were new of the impressive results from Atlanta, and new tests go further into the pockets of interest around the world.