Treat HIV infection before infection
Preventive treatment protects against HIV
Kirill Stasevich, CompulentaAlthough HIV still does not have a vaccine, you can protect yourself from the virus if you inject yourself with antiviral medicine in advance.
Probably, for some, this method will seem strange: we, for example, do not drink antibiotics for preventive purposes, but only when we get sick ourselves (however, about antibiotics: in agriculture they are often given to animals just for the sake of prevention). However, AIDS is an incurable and very peculiar disease, and, in addition, there are places on Earth where the risk of contracting HIV is extremely high. And that's where preventive treatment could justify itself.
In 2010, a study was conducted, thanks to which it was found out that taking tenofovir and emtricitabine in advance, two well-known antiretroviral drugs, can reduce the likelihood of HIV infection by 90%. However, not all participants took pills regularly throughout the study (which lasted several months), so overall HIV infection in the experimental group fell by only 44%.
HIV in human lymphatic tissue (photo by Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc.).
Scientists from Rockefeller University (USA), together with colleagues from the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and the National Primate Research Center in Tulane (USA), conducted similar experiments with the experimental drug GSK744, a more "advanced" analogue of dolutegravir, another recently created anti-HIV drug. GSK744 suppresses the work of the enzyme by which HIV inserts its DNA into the DNA of the cell, then to multiply it in copies. If the enzyme does not work, then the virus cannot reproduce.
Since the new drug is insoluble in water, scientists had to make crystal nanoparticles out of it and inject it into monkeys in this form. However, the nanoparticles had their advantage: they could stay in the tissues for quite a long time – from three to four months.
For eight weeks, sixteen macaques, on which the experiment was performed, were injected with HIV into the anus to simulate natural infection during homosexual contact; half of the animals received two injections of GSK744 at the same time. And, as the researchers write in the journal Science, GSK744 successfully protected macaques from the virus. None of the monkeys who received the drug developed an infection (Andrews et al., Long-Acting Integrase Inhibitor Protects Macaques from Intrarectal Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
Further experiments have shown that one portion of this remedy works in monkeys from 5 to 10 weeks. Since human metabolism is slower than that of macaques, then, according to approximate estimates of scientists, the drug will be effective for up to three months. That is, if we talk about prevention, you do not need to take pills regularly, just one injection every few months is enough.
Now it remains to test GSK744 in clinical experiments – and if the drug confirms its effectiveness in humans, then with its help it will be possible to greatly limit the spread of infection, simply not letting it into the body.
Prepared based on Nature News: Long-acting shot prevents infection with HIV analogue.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru06.03.2014