A cheap, generic drug long used to treat herpes may also help control the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. They found that acyclovir can work against HIV, but only in tissues that are also infected with herpes. The findings, published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, help explain why some studies have shown that people taking acyclovir have lower levels of HIV, yet others show that taking acyclovir does not prevent infection with the AIDS virus.

The herpes virus itself changes the drug into a form that can work against HIV, said Dr. Leonid Margolis of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who helped lead the study. "If you suppress herpes, HIV also goes down," Margolis said in a telephone interview. He hopes his team can now find better ways to use acyclovir against AIDS, and perhaps design new products, like a microbicide, to prevent infection.

"The findings open up promising new avenues of investigation in the fight against the AIDS virus," NICHD director Dr. Duane Alexander said in a statement. Acyclovir was the first drug to be designed and made synthetically, without the use of any compounds from plants or animals, Margolis said. It is also very safe, as it does not become active until it encounters a herpes virus — usually herpes simplex 2, the strain that causes genital herpes. The virus completes a chemical reaction called phosphorylation, turning the acyclovir into an active compound.

Many of the children are shunned when found to be positive for the AIDS virus and are denied nutrition and education. It is believed about 40 of the HIV children have died due to dysentery and malnutrition. The child rights commission has presented its findings after agents made visits to camps in Assam, Manipur and Tripura.

Members of the commission say they were shocked when they heard that children were forced to undergo mandatory HIV testing, with the medical status of the child being freely distributed. The children were found to face discrimination when found to be positive, leading to them becoming child labourers, prostitutes or being trafficked as child soldiers.

Birth certificates were also not issued to the children, denying them citizenship and entitlements. The commission has asked for the Indian states to ensure that the tests are conducted to provide treatment rather than for the purpose of exclusion and discrimination. Thousands of adults and children belonging to the Bru community have flooded Tripura due to ethnic conflict.

A new estimate of how many Americans have the AIDS virus puts the number at about 1.1 million, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. The CDC numbers, based on 2006 data, show the population living with HIV is growing as people become newly infected and as more patients survive thanks to HIV drugs. The report also suggests that past estimates that more than 1 million Americans were living with HIV overstated the actual total number of people with HIV infections at the time.

The agency used different methods than it has in the past to calculate the number. Its most recent nationwide estimate of 1 million had been given for 2003, and using the new methods the CDC figured that 994,000 were living with HIV that year. "These data really show the continued impact that the epidemic is having on Americans, and they really reinforce the severe toll that is experienced in multiple communities," the CDC's Richard Wolitski said in a telephone interview. The CDC report reinforced previous findings that the epidemic disproportionately affects blacks of both sexes as well as gay and bisexual men.

As the number of people living with HIV grows, so does the cost of providing medical services to this population and the burden on the U.S. health care system, Wolitski said. The CDC estimated that about one in five — 232,700 of the 1.1 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS — did not know they were infected. The total U.S. population is 300 million. "We're not going to be able to treat our way out of this epidemic. We need to have strong prevention programs so we can prevent these infections from occurring in the first place," said Wolitski, acting chief of the CDC's HIV/AIDS prevention division. Men made up three quarters of people with HIV infections.