AIDS Drugs: Doubling as Prevention?

By HILARY HYLTON

They are the mice that roared — five furry warriors in the battle against AIDS whose role in a Texas-based study has strengthened the possibility that common drugs used to treat HIV infection may someday work as a preventive against vaginal transmission of the virus. The results hold promise for millions of women, particularly in the developing world — Africa, Southeast Asia and South America — where females make up the fastest-growing segments of the HIV-infected population, and public-health workers are desperate to stanch the tide of new infections. "There are 5,700 deaths a day from HIV-AIDS — that's the equivalent of an Indonesian tsunami hitting the shore every day," says Dr. Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. read more >