One of the drug industry's holy grails is to discover an effective treatment for HIV/AIDS, and they've spent billions in the quest. But researchers have stumbled on something that seems to be effective, and it's already in plentiful supply - the multivitamin.
Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health gave the vitamins to pregnant women in Tanzania who were HIV-positive - and found that the progress of the disease was dramatically slowed.
They gave the women supplements that included vitamins B, C and E, and discovered that the CD4+ cell count 'significantly increased', while HIV-related complications common with immune suppression decreased.
While other researchers are making the customary call for more research, the Harvard team insists that its original study is large enough to draw definitive conclusions. The only trial worth repeating is to test other vitamins such as selenium, says research group leader Wafaie Fawzi, and to see if patients who are in more advanced stages of HIV infection could also benefit.
The results add weight to the hypothesis that HIV is not an infection, but is instead the result of a breakdown of the immune system from poor lifestyle choices. Once the immune system is built up again, so the symptoms of HIV slow or even disappear.