Experimental HIV prevention drug may be effective

An experimental HIV prevention drug may one day be an effective alternative to daily pills that stymie the risk of contracting HIV, new research shows.

Getting a shot every one to three months is the new method that was tested in monkeys, and two studies reported 100 percent protection from HIV, according to an AIDS conference held on Tuesday.

"If it works and proves to be safe, it would allow for HIV to be prevented with periodic injections, perhaps every three months," said Dr. Robert Grant, an AIDS expert at the Gladstone Institutes, reported ABC News.

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control tested this long-acting experimental drug, made by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, by giving monkeys six shots of the drug every four weeks while six others got placebo shots. They were exposed to the virus twice a week for 11 weeks.

The monkeys that received the placebo treatment were infected with HIV, "but the animals that received the long-acting drug remained protected," said study leader Gerardo Garcia-Lerma of the CDC.

In a second study, conducted by Chasity Andrews and colleagues at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York, eight monkeys were given two shots of the drug, four weeks apart, and fake treatment shots were given to eight others. After exposure to the virus for a total of eight weeks, the results mimicked the previous ones, showing that the preventative treatment worked in fending off the virus.

These results show that this method of HIV prevention could be an effective alternative to daily pills or a condom, which is the best way to prevent the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr. Judith Currier, an infectious disease specialist, hopes the findings are enough to rationalize further studies working toward making a vaccine.

"This is really promising," she said, adding that the research "supports moving this forward" into human testing.