Iran to mass-produce anti-AIDS drug
Iran plans to mass-produce its anti-AIDS herbal drug IMOD after successfully testing it on hundreds of HIV/AIDS positive patients without severe side effects.
The decision to go ahead with IMOD mass production was made after a number of countries expressed interest in conducting clinical tests of the drug, a Press TV correspondent reported from Tehran.
IMOD (short for Immuno-Modulator Drug) has so far been tested on 600 HIV/AIDS patients with minimum negative effects.
"There are a lot of synthetic drugs [for HIV] that have no effects," Dr. Minoo Mohraz, the director of Iran’s HIV/AIDS Research Center, said.
"Compared with the classic treatment of HIV infection, IMOD has shown no severe side effects on the 600 patients" who underwent the trial, she added.
According to UNAIDS, the number of HIV-positive people worldwide reached an estimated 33.4 million in 2008, while a projected 2.7 million others, including some 430,000 children, get infected with the viral disease every year.
The human immunodeficiency syndrome kills around two million people every year but less than half of HIV virus carriers are aware of their condition.
In developing countries, an estimated ten million people are in dire need of treatment for HIV/AIDS but only 40 percent of them are getting partial treatment.
Source: presstv.ir
