London, July 20 (IANS) A vaginal gel could practically halve a woman’s chances of contracting AIDS in what experts term as a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won’t use condoms.
‘We are giving hope to women,’ said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS programme.
‘For the first time we have seen results for a woman-initiated and woman-controlled HIV prevention option,’ added Sidibe, reports the Telegraph.
Women account for most new HIV infections. A gel could ‘help us break the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic,’ he said.
Salim Abdool Karim, the South African researcher who led the study, presents his results in Austria at the International Aids Conference in Vienna.
The results need to be confirmed in another study, and that level of protection is probably not enough to win approval of the microbicide gel in countries like the US, researchers say.
But they are optimistic it can be improved.
Anthony Fauci of the US National Institutes of Health said: ‘It’s the first time we’ve ever seen any microbicide give a positive result.’
The gel, spiked with the AIDS drug Tenofovir, cuts the risk of HIV infection by 50 percent after one year of use and 39 percent after two-and-a-half years, compared to a gel that contained no medicine.
More than 33 million people today are infected by HIV.
More than two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa, where 60 percent of new infections occur among women and girls.
Nearly 20 years of research have gone into HIV microbicides, but this is the first test to produce such positive results.
Earlier creams, which have not contained an antiretroviral, have had either a very low level of protection or even boosted the risk of infection.
