The cure for AIDS may lie in a study by Chinese scientists of a man who has not contracted HIV during two years of unprotected sex with his infected wife.
Doctors at the Fourth Military Medical University and Shaanxi Provincial Sanitation and Antipidemic Station made their findings public in a recent report in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province in Northwest China.
According to the report, a 25-year-old female farmer contracted HIV in 1998 via a blood transfusion given when she haemorrhaged during childbirth.
Last year, medical tests showed that the husband's antibodies of HIV-1 and HIV-2 were all negative, despite having unprotected sex with his wife.
"Earlier this year, the husband was again examined and the result was again negative, which ruled out the possibility that he was infected with HIV," said the university's Wu Yifu.
Wu offered two possible explanations for the man's good health: that a woman is less likely to transmit the virus to a man; and that a man's immune system is stronger than that of a woman.
(chinadaily.com.cn09/20/2001)
