Herpes Treatment Helps Suppress HIV

We rarely hear any good news about having a sexually transmitted disease. In fact, most people take every precaution possible in order to prevent contracting any dreaded sexually transmitted diseases like herpes. However, a recent study published by Cell Press in September 2008 and seen in the Cell Host and Microbe journal has determined that a drug used by those who have herpes has also shown to keep HIV at bay in tissues infected with both viruses. This newly discovered interaction that occurs when patients take this drug will help researchers develop new strategies for various HIV treatments.

It is not uncommon for patients who have contracted HIV to also be infected with different viruses. In fact, those who have HIV oftentimes are infected with human herpesvirus (HHV), specifically herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2). Infections of HHV are not always active; often, they can lie dormant for years. However, when a patient contracts HIV, an HHV infection is more likely to be reactivated.

The drug that researchers have pinpointed is acyclovir, or ACV, and has been administered to patients for many years to treat HHV. According to Dr. Leonid Margolis, the lead author of the recent study who hails from the National Institute of Health, “HHV has a unique ability to phosphorylate ACV to activate it, making the drug quite specific for HHV and, for the same reason, relatively non-active against other viruses, including HIV.” There were some patients who were infected with both HSV-2 and HIV who, after getting their ACV treatments, displayed decreased levels of HIV. After witnessing this phenomenon, Dr. Margolis and other researchers “decided to investigate this phenomenon experimentally using small blocks of human tissues. Drs. Andrea Lisco and Christophe Vanpouille who performed this work in my laboratory found that although ACV doesn’t inhibit HIV in ’sterile’ cell lines, it does, surprisingly, suppress HIV in tissues that carry no HSV-2 but various other HHVs.”

Researchers teamed up with Dr. Matthias Gotte from McGill University and a well-respected and well-known AIDS researcher Dr. Raymond Schinazi. This collaboration of researchers discovered that once the ACV phosphorylated and formed within the cells that were infected with HHV, it also worked to stop the HIV infections from duplicating itself and growing. These astonishing results showed the researchers why those patients infected with both HIV and HSV-2 responded the way they did to their ACV treatments. In addition, researchers are hoping that these treatments could also be used in the future on patients who are infected with HIV and other types of HHVs.

In addition, researchers also teamed up with Dr. McGuigan who works for Cardiff University and Dr. Balzarini who works for Catholic University to come up with different drug strategies based on the way ACV works that would also prevent HIV from replicating. Says Dr. Margolis, “We provide definitive experimental evidence of inhibition of HIV-1 RT activity by phosphorylated ACV and demonstrate that ACV phosphorylation occurring in human tissues infected by various HHVs transforms this widely-used inexpensive anti-herpes drug into a direct HIV inhibitor.”