Common herpes drug could help fight HIV: study
Posted by aidsfiction on September 11, 2008
The National Post reports that a herpes drug could fight HIV. Yes, more snake oil:
- A cheap, generic drug long used to treat herpes may also help control the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers reported Wednesday.They found that acyclovir can work against HIV, but only in tissues that are also infected with herpes.The findings, published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, help explain why some studies have shown that people taking acyclovir have lower levels of HIV, yet others show that taking acyclovir does not prevent infection with the AIDS virus.
The herpes virus itself changes the drug into a form that can work against HIV, said Dr. Leonid Margolis of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who helped lead the study.
“If you suppress herpes, HIV also goes down,” Dr. Margolis said in a telephone interview. ….
