A team of scientists from the Federal Biomedicine Agency's Immunology Institute said they have produced an interferon gamma drug to strengthen HIV sufferers' weakened immune systems and prevent the retrovirus's development into AIDS. The drug can also help people with advanced AIDS, by slowing the progression of the virus.
"Interferon gamma is capable of removing clinical manifestations of immune deficiency, thus preventing the development of diseases that are potentially lethal in patients with immunodeficiency," said one of the developers, Dr. Alexander Chernousov.
He said interferon gamma is not an alternative to traditional antiretroviral drugs. The drug has yet to undergo clinical trials, and at least $30 million is needed to put it into production.
According to independent experts, any new AIDS drug will cost between $800,000 and $1 billion to produce.
Russia has suffered from a rapid rise in HIV infection since the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of borders. The overall number of registered HIV cases among Russians exceeds 370,000 with over 100 new HIV cases reported every day.
The Central Research Institute of Pandemics said earlier there are 800,000 to 1,100,000 HIV carriers in Russia.
The Russian government has been repeatedly criticized for not doing enough to tackle the country's accelerating HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to UNAIDS, the pandemic in Russia and other post-Soviet states is growing faster than in any other region of the world, with the number of HIV cases rising more than 20-fold in the past decade.
Russia's cooperation with the UNAIDS program has brought down the cost of one course of antiretroviral treatment from $6,000 to $1,400. Now that Russia produces some of the drugs itself, Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov has promised that the price of a course of treatment may go down to $800.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking on the sidelines of the G8 summit, said all people infected with HIV will have access to antiretroviral drugs by the end of the decade, if programs now in the making are implemented.
December 1 is World AIDS Day.
