Treating Herpes May Not Prevent HIV Infections
Posted on: Friday, 20 June 2008, 12:14 CDT
A new report found evidence to deny previous claims that people with herpes are more likely to be infected with HIV.
The new finding may result in an about-face in modern HIV prevention strategies in Africa, where doctors work to prevent the spread of such diseases in order to reduce AIDS infections.
"It's a significant, disappointing finding," Francis Ndowa, coordinator of the sexually transmitted infections control team at the World Health Organization, said. She was not involved in the recent report, published in the medical journal The Lancet.
Researchers studied more than 3,000 men and women infected with herpes in Africa, Peru and the U.S. About half were treated with acyclovir, an antiviral that stops herpes ulcers.
After a year and a half, scientists found that 75 people out of the 1,581 who had been receiving aciclovir were later infected with HIV. Of the 1,591 people who received placebo pills, 64 contracted HIV.
Researchers also questioned participants about their sexual behavior with their recent partners.
The study was financially supported by the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, other U.S. government institutes, and by GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK), which sells aciclovir as Zovirax.
Experts say the new findings don’t necessarily deny that treating herpes to avoid HIV is the wrong approach.
"It's probably likely that we need considerably more potent interventions than we have," Connie Celum, a professor of global health and medicine at the University of Washington who led the Lancet study, told The Associated Press.
Experts said there was a complex relationship between the two viruses that is still not entirely understood.
In an accompanying commentary in the Lancet, Ronald H. Gray and Maria J. Wawer of Johns Hopkins University said it was questionable whether controlling sexually transmitted infectious could work to prevent HIV.
"It is time to reassess the hypothesis and to adjust prevention policy accordingly," they wrote.
But Ndowa and Celum said the strategy of fighting herpes to prevent AIDS might work, if a different dosage or more powerful drug was tried.
"We don't exactly know why this didn't work, but this approach still has potential," Ndowa said. "Maybe it was just too much to expect from a tablet taken twice a day that it could be effective against HIV."
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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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