Common Acne Drug Helps Stop Spread of HIV in Body

Researchers have discovered that a common acne medication can help keep HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--from replicating in the human body, a March 18 Johns Hopkins press release announced.
Minocycline--a form of tetracycline--has been in use for three decades as an acne medication, but the researchers discovered that the drug can also suppress T cell replication--and, in doing so, prevent HIV from propagating itself. Just as importantly, the drug does not diminish the immune system’s ability to protect the body from disease, which is the primary role of T cells and the reason why HIV--which invades and destroys T cells--devastates the immune system and leads to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.

Researchers believe that if used in conjunction with a standard cocktail of drugs, the level of HIV in an infected person’s body can be kept low for a longer period of time--even if the patient misses doses of his or her drug regimen.

"The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins," Dr. Janice Clements said. Clements, a professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine," added, "The big challenge clinicians deal with now in this country when treating HIV patients is keeping the virus locked in a dormant state... minocycline is another arm of defense against the virus."

Researchers have identified a variety of possible approaches to combat the spread of HIV and to help those who are already HIV positive. Advocate.com reported in a Dec. 3, 2009 article that a new microbicide has been shown to reduce the incidence of HIV transmission in women; other promising avenues include drugs that promote the human immune system’ own general strength, as well as enhancing the body’s own ability to fend off HIV. Those avenues may one day lead to a vaccine to help protect against infection.

A cure will be harder to create, since any cure would need to kill (or suppress replication of) the virus without doing too much harm to human tissue. Suppressing the replication of the virus is an important step toward better managing--and, perhaps one day curing--the disease.