Content courtesy of Ivanhoe

More than 33 million people in the world are living with HIV and millions of new cases are diagnosed every year. Condoms can prevent HIV, but with the disease spreading every day, doctors know it's not enough. Now, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are testing a new option and this time women are in control.

As a single woman and the executive director of a large non-profit, Aisha Holmes is used to calling the shots.

"I think I'm a do what I want to do, when I want to do it kind of person," she told Ivanhoe. "I'm single. I like to hang out with my friends and take advantage of everything life has to offer around the city for myself."

Soon, this gel could be the key to a new kind of control for Holmes and millions of other women. It's designed to work like a chemical condom to block HIV.

"I think we can look at it as an alternative to condoms, as a mechanism to prevent sexual transmission and the benefits of this is that it could be something that is controlled by women, possibly even where their male partner will not even know they're using it," Craig Hoesley, M.D., the principal investigator of the study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, explained to Ivanhoe.

The colorless odorless gel contains tenofovir, a drug approved in pill form by the FDA to treat patients with active HIV. In a recent phase two trial, Holmes and 200 other healthy women used the gel daily or before sex.

"No more women asking your partner if he was comfortable wearing a condom or the awkwardness of figuring out how to phrase it and ask," Holmes said. "If you use the gel, you're in complete control of it."

Preliminary studies found the gel is safe and easy to use. The next large scale study will show how effective it is in preventing HIV.

"I think it could be important worldwide -- the United States, but also in some parts of the world where women maybe are less empowered to ask their male sex partner to use a condom," Dr. Hoesley said.

Holmes says for herself and women everywhere, the more options, the better.

"It definitely represents choice and independence for women," she said.

Researchers are about to begin the next phase of their trials of the HIV gel -- a much larger study involving hundreds of women in Africa and other countries. Eventually, they also hope to test the gel's effectiveness in blocking other STD's besides HIV.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Troy Goodman, Public Relations
(205) 934-8938
tdgoodman@uab.edu

http://main.uab.edu/uasom