Researchers in South Africa Announce a New Weapon in AIDS Fight

20 July 2010

Scientists from the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, which produced the gel, from left, Koleka Mlisana, Leila Mansoor, Janet Frohlich and Senge Sibeko

This is the Special English Health Report.

South African researchers at the international AIDS conference in Vienna, Austria have announced major progress in the fight against the disease. The researchers say their study shows a vaginal gel substance reduced the risk of HIV infection among women who used it.

The gel contains tenofovir. This is a common anti-retroviral drug used to treat people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The study was done by South African scientists with the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa. It involved almost nine hundred sexually active women between the ages of eighteen and forty.

All were from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Half were given the gel containing tenofovir. The other half were given a gel without an active substance. They were told to use the gels twelve hours before sexual intercourse and again within twelve hours after sex.

Both groups were told the gels were experimental. They were advised to use another form of HIV prevention.

The study lasted thirty months. Women who used the tenofovir gel reduced their risk of HIV infection by thirty-nine percent. And the study found that the women who used the gel more often had even better results. Women who used the gel more than eighty percent of the times when they had sex had fifty-four percent fewer HIV infections.