Aids Preventive Gel Carraguard Fails
February 19, 2008
(Long Island, N.Y.) A new gel called Carraguard developed by New York based international nonprofit company Population Council that was supposed to prevent AIDS procurement for women failed in its initial testing in South Africa which involved over 6,000 women used as subjects for the research paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID.
The Gel works as a vaginal cream applied topically to prevent or lower the risk of acquiring HIV virus among women. It was tested in South Africa as the region represents the highest number of incidents with the deadly virus, but researchers where skeptical of the results as only 10 percent of the subjects reported to have used the gel every time they made physical contact while 44 percent of the total respondents confessed in using the gel about half the time they had sex compromising the study in its entirety.
The cream contains carrageenan which is extracted from red seaweed and contains characteristics of Microbricide a compound or substance whose purpose is to reduce the infectivity of microbes, such as viruses or bacteria. Scientific studies of carrageenan’s safety for use in medicine and as food additives continue.
The study was conducted among 6,202 female participants in the towns of Gugulethu, Isipingo and Soshanguve in South Africa and lasted two years. The group where divided into two categories, One represents subjects given Carraguard gel while the other group where given scores of placebo gel. Of the original participants, only 4,244 finished the entire study with 33 percent of the respondents dropping out 18 percent of which could not be located for their follow-up.
Upon the conclusion of the research, 134 women of the first group which was given the real Carraguard gel contracted HIV infections while 151 women of the other group obtained the virus. “The results are comparable with no statistically significant difference.” said Khatija Ahmed, a microbiologist who headed the study’s Setshaba Research Centre site near Pretoria.
AIDS or Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is contracted through a collection of symptoms and infections from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in humans. It was first recognized as an epidemic on June 5, 1981 and World Health Organization have estimated that over 25 Million people have died of AIDS and as of December 2007, over 37.3 million people worldwide currently suffer from this condition.
Posted by News LI Editor · Filed Under Health
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