The researchers have been trying to find a vaccine to prevent AIDS but the virus keeps changing, making their efforts to seem useless. But a new vaginal gel brings hope in the fight against AIDS.

In a small trial using monkeys, a team of doctors at the University of Minnesota found that monkeys receiving the gel that contains a common food addictive called GML, were protected from the AIDS virus. “It has the kind of efficacy that would avert millions of cases of HIV if it were used even part of the time by women,” Dr. Ashley Haase, lead researcher of the project, explains.

The next step would be to test the gel on humans. If they prove the gel has the same protective effects on women, this gel could be a new way for a woman to treat herself in order to prevent infection by someone who has the virus.

How it works? The compound acts as a blocker to the virus. AIDS is a very dangerous virus that attacks the immune system and tricks it to produce T cells, which HIV uses to enter the body. GML affects these immune responses and breaks the chain of events that let HIV spread through the body. So basicly this is the idea: the researchers wanted to have an agent that could modulate the immune response at the portal of HIV entry in order to block sexual transmission of HIV.
GML is a compound used in many cosmetics and in medicines taken orally or used on the skin. It is found in breast milk.