NEWS
SEAWEED GEL TO COMBAT HIV
© BBC News Online's Mangai Balasegaram
Thursday, 9 November, 2000
Seaweed may not only be useful in Japanese cuisine - if ongoing research proves successful, it may be crucial in the fight against Aids.
Scientists are currently working on a seaweed gel that will prevent transmission of HIV, the virus that causes Aids.
The gel would be inserted into a woman's vagina before sex, and thus would have the advantage of giving women control of the product, unlike condoms.

The New York-based Population Council has been working for about 10 years on the product, carrageenan, which has the trademark name Carraguard or PC-515.

The gel, long used in anti-ageing cosmetics and in the food industry, does not kill HIV but prevents the virus entering human cells.
Human trials are underway in Thailand and South Africa to test whether women are comfortable with the product and to check for side-effects. About 165 married women in Chiang Rai, Thailand, will use the gel, to be applied an hour before sex.

"If these studies are successful - which we expect they will be - we then need to go to a large-scale trial to test its effectiveness [against HIV]," said George Brown, the Population Council's vice-president of international programmes. The research aims to provide a product affordable in poor countries.

He said women could not always get their partners to use condoms, which were only used "at very low levels", despite enormous promotion efforts.

Female condoms, which can be used without the partner's knowledge, are prohibitively costly in poor countries. The gel will provide a protective coating on the surface of the vagina.  The seaweed - found off the Chilean coast - because it came from a class of compounds known as sulphated polysaccharides, long known to be effective against viruses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1014000/1014125.stm

© Speak Out Terms of use