Yogurt May Help Stop HIV Infection, Study Says
January 18th, 2006 by RespiteMatch.comJan. 18 (Bloomberg) — Yogurt bacteria may be useful in blocking HIV transmission, providing a cheap and effective way of fighting the virus, Nature magazine said, citing a study by researchers in the U.S. and the U.K.
Lactococcus lactis, a bacterium used to produce cheese and yogurt, was altered genetically by scientists at Brown Medical School in Rhode Island and the U.K.’s Food Research institute to generate cyanovirin, a drug that has been used to stop HIV infection in the cells of monkeys and humans, Nature said on its Web site.
The bacterium is also found in the human body, including the stomach and vagina where it halts the growth of other harmful bacteria. The same principle could be applied with the genetically modified version, Nature said. The bacteria may have advantages over vaccines because it could be applied directly to peripheral areas of the body including the mucosal surfaces of the vagina, the report said.
“You need less of the therapeutic chemical if you deliver it locally,'’ Lothar Steidler, a molecular biologist at Cork University in Ireland who has worked on modifying bacteria to deliver drugs, was quoted saying by Nature.com.
The bacteria can live in the vagina for as long as a week, and the scientists are working to prolong the life, the magazine said. Bharat Ramratnam, an HIV specialist at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues led the research, which is published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Nature said. The researchers will test the bacteria in monkeys.
Should the bacterium prove useful it would be a cheaper way of providing protection, an important issue for countries in Asia and Africa where AIDS and HIV are rife, the report said.
In November, UNAIDS, an alliance of six United Nations agencies fighting HIV, estimated that the disease killed more than 3.1 million people in 2005, with about 18 percent of them children under the age of 15.
The virus killed about 2.6 million adults and 570,000 children in 2005, an 11 percent rise from the total number of deaths in 2003, the group said in its annual report. New infections rose almost 7 percent to 4.9 million. About 77 percent of the deaths and 65 percent of the new infections in 2005 were in sub-Saharan Africa, UNAIDS said.
In some cultures, it’s difficult for women to ask their partners to use condoms. Scientists have made strides in developing gels and creams - known as microbicides - that could be used like spermicides, only to protect against HIV. Like a diaphragm, the products can be used by women without the consent of their partners.
There are five experimental microbicides in large-scale efficacy trials and several new microbicides already in safety studies, the International Partnership for Microbicides said in a statement Nov. 30. Microbicides may be available in five to seven years, the group said.
Microbicides will allow women to control their protection and are cheaper than antiretroviral drugs that people must take after being infected with the disease, which has killed
To contact the reporter on this story:
Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net
