VAGINAL RING REDUCES HIV RATE IN AFRICAN WOMEN

A flexible and inexpensive ring that is inserted into the vagina, where it slowly releases an antiviral drug, helped protect African women against contracting HIV from their sexual partners, researchers said Monday in reports on two major studies that included more than 4,500 women.

The protection was not complete: Overall infection rates were reduced by only 27 percent and 31 percent, though women who were over 21 fared better. But researchers said that the device was still a major advance and that the results were the most promising to date in HIV prevention for African women. They said they would press ahead to get the ring approved and widely distributed as quickly as possible.

“The hope was to find something that could be usable enough by women that it would provide HIV. protection, and that’s what we got,” said Dr. Jared M. Baeten, from the University of Washington, who led 

one of the studies, called Aspire. “It gives me tremendous optimism.”

Globally, almost 37 million people are infected with HIV, more than half of them women. The majority of those women live in sub-Saharan Africa, which has some of the highest HIV rates in the world. Three earlier HIV prevention studies in African women failed, largely because participants did not consistently use the methods offered, which included antiviral pills and microbicidal vaginal gels.

The two studies released on Monday, in HIV-negative women ages 18 to 45, were presented in Boston at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. Women over 21 who used the ring most consistently fared better.