A team of researchers, lead by Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim Abdool Karim, who work for the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, recently announced a new gel that could substantially prevent AIDS in women.

The gel, technically termed a microbiocide, proved to be remarkably effective in stopping the replication of HIV in a person’s cell. The gel was created using the antiretroviral tenofovir, which is also a key component in AIDS drugs currently on the market. When applied to the vagina, the gel has shown to cut rates of infection by a stunning forty percent.

The gel offers new hope for women, who, particularly in countries like South Africa, are at considerable risk for contracting the disease, since they have to rely on their partner’s choice of using protection. In developing countries especially, condom use has been a particularly difficult practice to instill in the general population.

Researchers purported that if the gel were to be properly used by a mere thirty percent of women in South Africa, then, in a span of twenty years, well over a million HIV infections could be effectively prevented. This is a monumental development in HIV prevention research, as most previous attempts at finding effective methods have failed. What’s more, current prevention measures focus largely on behavioral aspects like using condoms and deciding to remain in a monogamous sexual relationship.

A recent Scientific American articlereports on the development, quoting the executive director of the AIDS Advocacy Coalition Mitchell Warren. Warren was reported as stating:

“This is a historic day for HIV prevention research…[The findings are] the first clinical evidence that a microbiocide gel can help to prevent the sexual
transmission of HIV infection.”

Warren also stated that the findings are “a great boost to the microbiocide field.” This is especially heartening, as most attempts at gel production and development have, in one way or another, failed in clinical trials.

The researchers’ findings were announced Monday July 19 and are scheduled to be presented on July 20 at the International AIDS conference in Vienna, Austria. Still, although the researchers and others in the thick of the fight against AIDS are hopeful, the new gel must pass through more vigorous research before being approved by regulatory bodies and placed on the market. This could, the researchers estimated, take up to one or two years.