Common Nail Fungus Drug Could be used to Treat HIV

Ciclopirox, a drug used to treat nail fungus could be used to cure HIV, a new study reported.

The drug works by disrupting the mitochondria or the powerhouse of HIV- the virus that causes AIDS, Healthday reported. The study, conducted by researchers at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School also found that Ciclopirox eliminated the virus from cell cultures and that the virus did not return even after the treatment was stopped.

Ciclopirox belongs to a class of drugs called antifungals and is used to tackle fungus that grows under nails. Side-effects of the drug include redness and irritation at the place of application along with pain, discoloration and in growth beneath the nail.

The drug has just passed laboratory tests as a potential anti-HIV treatment and still needs to undergo vigorous clinical trials to be approved for human use. However, since the drug is already approved for use in humans for fungal infections, it should be able to pass the safety tests in humans, according to the researchers.

Some 34 million people in the world are now living with HIV. Of these, about 54 percent have access to antiretroviral therapy, according to World Health Organization. The drug combination used to treat HIV controls the infection, but doesn't eliminate the virus completely, researchers told Healthday.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.

For decades, researchers have been trying to understand how HIV causes infection and now we have several studies claiming to have found the elusive "cure for HIV/ADIS". Recently, scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital reported that HIV-positive people receiving bone-marrow transplant had lower levels of the virus in their body. Also, a team of U.S. doctors had announced that they had successfully "cured" a baby of HIV.