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Genital Herpes Drug Slows HIV Progression
Most people infected with HIV are also coincidentally infected with type 2 herpes simplex virus, or HSV2.
Previous lab research has shown that using an anti-HSV2 drug called aciclovir reduces the amount of AIDS virus in the blood.
What was unknown, though, was whether this also had an impact on the spread of HIV in the body.
The answer, according to a study published by The Lancet, is that aciclovir does have a braking effect that is modest but could become a useful option for doctors.
It could buy time before a patient has to be given powerful drugs to combat HIV.
Jairam Lingappa of the University of Washington led a trial in 14 sites in southern and eastern Africa, recruiting 3,381 heterosexual volunteers who were co-infected with HSV2 and HIV-1, the main strain of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.
Half of the group were assigned to aciclovir, taking twice-daily doses of the drug, or to a dummy lookalike pill, and were followed for up to 24 months.
The key question was whether the volunteers' count of CD4 cells, the immune cells that are destroyed by HIV, fell below 200 per microlitre by the end of the trial.
On this score, aciclovir reduced the risk by 16 percent. Of the volunteers on aciclovir, 284 fell below the 200 CD4 count, whereas the number among the placebo group was 324.
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More News on: Oral Health And AIDS, Drug Toxicity, Cold Sore, Shingles, AIDS/HIV, AIDS/HIV - Epidemiology, AIDS/HIV - Clinical Features, AIDS/HIV - Health Education, AIDS/HIV - Prevention And Transmission, AIDS / HIV - Treatment
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