HIV protection and contraceptive in one ring
Female contraceptive armed against HIV
Kirill Stasevich, CompulentaJust yesterday we wrote about how preventive treatment helps to resist HIV.
In that work, we were talking about a new drug that is injected into the body ahead of time and remains in it for several weeks without letting the virus into the body.
In another article (Clark et al., Engineering a Segmented Dual-Reservoir Polyurethane Intravaginal Ring for Simultaneous Prevention of HIV Transmission and Unwanted Pregnancy), which was published in PLoS ONE by specialists from Northwestern University (USA), a similar idea is being promoted, only here a female contraceptive provides preventive protection against HIV.
Patrick Kiser and his colleagues did a very simple thing: they filled the vaginal ring with an antiretroviral drug.
Vaginal rings are one of the most popular female contraceptives using hormones. The researchers came up with the idea to combine the contraceptive drug levonorgestrel and the antiretroviral tenofovir in one ring. Levonorgestrel is very poorly soluble in water, whereas tenofovir, on the contrary, dissolves perfectly, and scientists had to spend five years coming up with a ring design that would allow simultaneous diffusion of both substances in the right quantities.
As a result, the ring was made of two types of polyurethane; one part of it contains a contraceptive drug, and the other contains an antiviral. The ring can remain in place for three months, and, according to the authors of the work, all this time it is effective against both unwanted pregnancy and infection.
The usual methods of preliminary protection against the virus assume that a person will take pills daily or use a vaginal antiviral gel before and after sex. It is clear that a ring that you can forget about for three months is more convenient and effective.
Animal experiments have shown that vaginal antiviral rings are no less effective than antiviral gel; in addition, they protect not only from HIV, but also from the HSV-2 herpes virus. The cost of one such ring is now $ 10, but, according to the developers, it can be reduced to $ 5, which is comparable to the cost of the same vaginal gels.
Since these funds are developed primarily for residents of developing countries, the price of them turns out to be as important a parameter as efficiency.
Prepared based on the materials of Northwestern University:
Long-Lasting Device Protects Against HIV and Pregnancy.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.03.2014