Herpes drug may help control AIDS virus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cheap, generic drug long used to treat herpes may also help control the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers reported on 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," Margolis said in a telephone interview.

He hopes his team can now find better ways to use acyclovir against AIDS, and perhaps design new products, like a microbicide, to prevent infection.

"The findings open up promising new avenues of investigation in the fight against the AIDS virus," NICHD director Dr. Duane Alexander said in a statement.
Acyclovir was the first drug to be designed and made synthetically, without the use of any compounds from plants or animals, Margolis said.

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