SCIENCE NEWS - Acne drug minocycline inhibits HIV activation

In most people, HIV can be controlled with a drug combination called HAART, short for highly active antiretroviral therapy. But HAART doesn’t wipe out the virus, and stresses on the immune system such as an infection can reactivate the latent virus and trigger its spread.

An inexpensive antibiotic might complement standard drugs in fighting the AIDS virus, a new study shows. The drug, called minocycline, has been used for decades to control acne, but the new findings suggest it inhibits HIV that has infected cells from reactivating and replicating itself.

In the new study, molecular biologist Janice Clements of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and her colleagues infected human T cells with HIV in lab dishes, then added minocycline to some of these batches. After 24 hours, the minocycline-treated cells contained half as much HIV RNA as the other cells, suggesting the drug had inhibited the ability of the virus to replicate. The scientists also tested minocycline on T cells obtained from HIV patients who had been treated with HAART. Minocycline again stalled HIV replication, as demonstrated by a 60 percent decline in activity of a key gene that HIV needs to awaken and replicate.

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