IRMA Presses for Intensified Rectal Microbicide Research

(Vienna)  Today at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, members of the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) and thousands of other HIV advocates and scientists cheered a long-awaited, much anticipated success in the quest for new HIV prevention technologies. Researchers announced that a vaginal gel has been shown to significantly reduce a woman’s risk of being infected with HIV and genital herpes.

These game-changing results of the safety and effectiveness study of an antiretroviral microbicide gel were reported by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA).

The microbicide gel that CAPRISA studied contained 1% tenofovir—an antiretroviral drug commonly used to treat people living with HIV—and was found to be 39% effective in reducing a woman’s risk of becoming infected with HIV during vaginal intercourse and 51% effective in preventing genital herpes infections among the women in the trial. These protective effects increased as the use of tenofovir increased, so that women who used the gel in more than 80% of their sex acts during the trial had a 54% reduction in HIV infections. If and when other studies of tenofovir gel confirm these results, widespread use of the gel, at this level of protection, could prevent millions of new HIV infections over the next two decades. Tenofovir is also being studied as a form of oral pre-exposure prophylaxis.

Read the full article on irma-rectalmicrobicides.blogspot.com.

Read related article in Science, "Effectiveness and Safety of Tenofovir Gel, an Antiretroviral Microbicide, for the Prevention of HIV Infection in Women".

Watch the webcast of the session today [20 July] at AIDS 2010 where Drs Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim presented the results of the CAPRISA004 study.

Graphics above were taken from the original International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) article.