Gel could save millions of women from AIDS

Millions of women a year could be protected against AIDS by a cheap ingredient used in ice cream and cosmetics, scientists say. The compound, called glycerol monolaurate, or GML, is also found in breast milk. But tests reported this week suggested that it could protect monkeys against infection with a virus similar to AIDS. It stopped inflammation and protected the same cells the AIDS virus usually infects.

Although GML couldn’t give 100 per cent protection, it could greatly reduce a woman's risk of being infected, researchers wrote in the journal 'Nature'. A single dose cost just pennies to make.Provided that further tests show it can work safely in women, GML could be given as a vaginal gel or cream.

AIDS has claimed more than 25 million lives, according to figures in The Times newspaper. Of the 10,000 people around the world contracting HIV every day, the majority are infected by unprotected sex, with the greatest incidence in sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Many victims are married women whose husbands will not use condoms and are often trying to have children. The gel would provide a safe and private way to protect them.

'This result represents a highly encouraging new lead in the search for an effective microbicide to prevent HIV transmission that meets the criteria of safety, affordability and efficacy,” said Ashley Haase and Pat Schlievert of the University of Minnesota.

Even if it was only 60 per cent effective, such a gel could prevent 2.5 million HIV cases over three years, they said.
But they did note that more tests would be needed to make sure the gel was actually preventing HIV and not just delaying it.

The GML discovery marked an important step in the field of microbicides - the development of creams and gels designed to prevent HIV from infecting cells, say scientists. And with an AIDS vaccine still decades away, agreement is growing that microbicides - in which Britain is a world leader - now offer the most realistic drug strategy to control the spread of the disease.

Research into microbicides, it was announced last recently, is to receive more than £90 million from the Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next five years. Describing the new monkey research as exciting, Professor Andrew McMichael, director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, said: “This is an inexpensive compound that could be used in humans and clinical trials are very likely to follow.”

Written by Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children