Currently, the most practical ways to stop HIV transmission are protected sex, monogamy (with an uninfected partner) or abstaining from sex altogether. However, researchers have spent many years without success trying to develop another option – a gel that women (and possibly men) could use to kill the virus before it enters the body.

Whilst condoms can block the virus, many women who want to get pregnant won’t use them, and so they risk infection from their partners. However, now it seems that a new sexual gel might curb the spread of AIDS by stopping cells vulnerable to the virus from rushing to the site of infection.

Previously, researchers have had difficulties destroying the virus without harming the person in the process; and some gels have actually made virus transmission easier by causing tears in the lining of the vagina.

Now, according to a study appearing in the journal Nature, Scientists have reported that a common germ-killing compound has prevented transmission of SIV (an HIV-like virus found in monkeys) – which is an encouraging sign that it could also work in humans.

Dr. Ashley Haase and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA, discovered that a few epithelial cells on the cervix of female macaques are the first point of entry for SIV. After which, nearby immune cells respond by releasing molecules that trigger inflammation and summon T-cells to the cervix.

Under normal circumstances, those T-cells would destroy invaders. However, T-cells are the very same cells that SIV (and also HIV) use to infect their new host.

Using information from studies of Toxic shock syndrome (a life-threatening bacterial infection that can affect women using tampons), chemicals have already been identified that can suppress vaginal inflammation. Therefore, Haase’s team examined a compound called Glycerol Monolaurate (GML), which is already recognized as safe for humans, since it’s a commonly found constituent of vegetable oils, various foods and deodorants – where it kills a variety of germs in addition to helping substances mix properly.

Haase and colleagues tested GML added to a sexual lubricant on five female rhesus macaques that were vaginally exposed to SIV. As a result, they found that four out of five monkeys treated with the gel avoided infection after repeated exposure to the virus, whilst five different monkeys in a control group that only received the lubricant without GML all became infected with SIV, after being exposed to it.

The research seems promising, but there are other important questions to be answered, including whether this treatment would protect men from infection when they have sex with other women (or men), and in any case more experiments in animals will be needed before GML can be tested on humans.

However, the next steps would be to move on to studies that would confirm the compound actually works, and to solve issues such as whether GML would block HIV in a woman’s cervix already inflamed by other infections, or whether blocking cervical immune responses could leave her less protected from other infections.

The surprising good news is that GML could eventually make its way into sexual lubricants that women could use, and would cost less than a cent per dose for each woman.

Thus, the researchers argue, even if the compound were only 60 percent effective, it would prevent nearly a million HIV infections a year, and might slow the spread of AIDS.

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Posted by Jonathan in Biochemistry, Biology

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