New research may lend support to the theoretical concept of giving HIV drugs to high-risk women in order to help them avoid infection with the virus through intercourse.

In the study, researchers used mice that were engineered with human stem-cell transplants to be susceptible to intravaginal HIV infection. Among them, none of five mice given antiretroviral drugs was infected when vaginally exposed to HIV, in contrast to seven of the eight mice that were not given ARVs and became HIV-infected.

The study supplies proof the strategy could work, said Dr. J. Victor Garcia, its lead investigator and an internal-medicine professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "To translate that to humans will take more work," said Garcia, whose team included University of Minnesota researchers. He sees sub-Saharan Africa as the best region for pre-exposure prophylaxis, but it would need major financial support.

Other barriers include the supply of ARVs for treatment and the drugs' side effects, said Dr. David Wright, head AIDS researcher at Central Texas Clinical Research. "In Third World countries and in underdeveloped countries, governments don't have enough money to buy these drugs" for those already infected, he said.

The full report, "Antiretroviral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Prevents Vaginal Transmission of HIV-1 in Humanized BLT Mice," was published in Public Library of Science Medicine (2008;5(1):e16 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050016).

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