Herpes drug does not prevent HIV infection: study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who took a drug to reduce outbreaks of genital herpes were not any less likely to become infected with the AIDS virus, an international team of researchers reported on Monday.

The findings raised questions about whether the drug, called acyclovir, worked well enough to stop blistering or whether herpes raises the risk of infection in ways not fully understood.

Connie Celum of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and colleagues tested more than 3,000 volunteers with genital herpes, also known as herpes simplex 2. Half got acyclovir and half took placebo pills.

This herpes virus, which infects an estimated 45 million people in the United States alone, has been shown to raise the risk of HIV infection by as much as 69 percent.

It causes painful, suppurating blisters and one obvious theory for why people with herpes are also more likely to get HIV was that the open sores give the AIDS virus a doorway into the body.

"It makes sense to see if treating herpes might reduce the risk of acquiring HIV," said Dr. Rowena Johnston, vice president of research for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, a nonprofit group.

"The question was if we treated them for genital herpes did it decrease the risk of acquiring HIV. The answer was no. It is a disappointment," Johnston said in a telephone interview.

Celum told a meeting of AIDS researchers in Boston that there was no difference in the rate of new AIDS infections among their volunteers in Peru, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and the United States.