I haven’t seen articles relating to sodium valproate as a treatment for HIV but I have seen research on valproic acid which is a closely related drug. Both sodium valproate and valproate acid are anticonvulsant drugs that are used to treat epilepsy.<\/p>\n
18 months ago a major medical journal (the Lancet) gave very high profile to a very small study using valproic acid as part of a strategy that may lead to a cure.<\/p>\n
Although HIV drugs dramatically reduce the amount of virus in your body, they don’t eradicate or clear the virus completely because the drugs only work in cells that are active or ‘awake’. Many CD4 cells, including cells infected with HIV, are resting or sleeping – and they can sleep for 50 years – or wake up at any time.<\/p>\n
Valproic acid was used to stimulate the resting HIV-infected cells to wake up, so that treatment could work against this virus too. If all the sleeping cells could be activated, then this would be a step in understanding how to find a way to eradicate HIV (rather than have to use life-long treatment).<\/p>\n
Although the results were interesting, the effect was only limited and are a long way from anything like a cure.<\/p>\n
This is only a research area. There would not be any benefit from taking this drug to try and help your own HIV treatment.<\/p>\n
We included a review of this research in HIV Treatment Bulletin: ‘Depletion of latent HIV-1 reservoir with valproic acid: interesting data but not a cure’<\/a><\/p>\n If you’d like to send details of the article you read, or a link to it online I can also reply to that specifically.<\/p>\n