Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Thursday February 11, 1999
Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer
Sodium dodecyl sulfate is the first topical agent ever shown to kill human papillomavirus, or HPV, the sexually transmitted infection that causes cervical cancer, Penn State University researchers announced Thursday.
Like many chemicals now being tested, it also seems to block HIV, the AIDS virus. But the extra cervical-cancer protection has researchers intrigued, and the National Institutes of Health cautiously hopes that first-stage testing in women could begin later this year.
"We're excited about the broad-spectrum nature," said Dr. Penny Hitchcock, NIH's microbicide chief. The HPV protection is particularly intriguing because "it's been a lot harder for us to find anything that works with that."
"But we're cautious," she stressed, because researchers have lots of work - including turning the ingredient into a usable vaginal gel - before initial testing in women could begin.
The work is important because 5,000 American women and 250,000 women worldwide die from cervical cancer every year. HPV is thought to be the most common sexually transmitted infection. It is often without symptoms, but can cause genital warts as well as lead to cervical cancer.
"If you could eliminate (HPV), you could potentially prevent all those cancers," said Penn State microbiologist Mary K. Howett, who discovered the action of sodium dodecyl sulfate, or SDS.
In addition, HIV is increasing rapidly among women worldwide.
Microbicides are gels or films that women would insert into the vagina before sex to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Currently, women's only protection is condom use.
But so far, no microbicides have panned out. A study just found that the popular spermicide nonoxynol-9, long thought the best hope for an anti-HIV gel, doesn't protect after all. Scientists now are studying whether other spermicides or chemicals could work instead.
But no experimental microbicides have shown any effect against HPV, the cervical cancer virus.
In the February journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Howett reported that in test-tube studies, SDS inactivated both the AIDS and herpes viruses. Like other experimental microbicides, SDS is a detergent that dissolves the fatty coating that holds those viruses together.
But the cervical cancer virus is coated with tightly packed proteins that detergents can't dissolve. SDS, however, also is a "denaturing" agent that picked those proteins apart, Howett said.
After it worked in test tubes, she injected human cells with the cancer virus or with SDS-treated virus and then implanted those cells inside mice. The treated human cells grew normally with no evidence of HPV infection. The untreated cells grew into genital warts.
SDS is very safe, interacting with people's vulnerable mucosal tissues every day as they brush their teeth or shampoo. So Howett believes it would be equally gentle as a vaginal microbicide, something the first tests will try to determine.
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