Microbicides and HIV: A Review and an update

HIV is a pandemic which has continually posed challenges to the scientific society in large and to medical fraternity in particular in terms of treatment as well as prevention. The treatment is lifelong suppressive than curative; hence the importance has always been to prevention strategies. The strategies like abstinence, monogamy and consistent condom use have various societal and behavioural issues and HIV vaccine is still not at the horizon. In such a scenario, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and microbicides have emerged as newer options of prevention. Microbicides are referred to as topical PrEP. They are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV. Microbicides can be vaginal and rectal and can be formulated as gels, foams, rings, hydrogels, silicone elastomer gels, diaphragm, quick-dissolve polyvinyl alcohol based films, and bioadhesive vaginal tablets. The microbicides have been divided into various categories based on where they disrupt the pathway of sexual transmission of HIV. The article highlights the classes of microbicides and various trials conducted on them. It also enumerates various approaches in pipeline like antimicrobial peptides, aptamers, flavonoids, small interfering RNAs and DNAs, and bioengineered lactic acid bacilli.