USC Times* - July 2004
Chris Horn

If you're wondering what the connection is between seaweed and AIDS, Teas can explain. She recently conducted a pilot study in Columbia to test the efficacy of treating HIV-positive clients with algae (seaweed and spirulina). It turns out that certain types of algae appear to fight HIV and other serious viral infections, but there is plenty of skepticism in the science and health communities, Teas said.

"The idea that you can protect yourself by a dietary supplement seems too monumental, and seaweed itself seems too inconsequential to make a difference," said Teas, a research assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior.

And yet there is much scientific evidence of algae's ability to prevent HIV infection in cell culture and some evidence that algae stimulates the immune systems of animals and people. Teas points out that HIV infection rates are far lower in Japan - 12,000 in a population of 127 million - than in Africa - where 25 million people are living with HIV.

In some African countries, more than 35 percent of the people between 15 and 49 years of age are HIV-positive. Although there are many differences between Japan and Africa, the possibility of dietary protection has been largely ignored, Teas said.

"I am sure that ship captains during the Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries could not imagine that the lowly lime could prevent the devastating effects of scurvy due to vitamin C deficiency," Teas said.

In Teas' own pilot study in Columbia, three HIV-positive subjects ingested 10 algae capsules daily for three weeks. All experienced a verifiable decrease in their viral loads (the amount of active HIV in their blood) ranging from 29 percent to 67 percent and an increase in the type of infection-fighting white blood cells that HIV kills. Teas has approval from USC's Institutional Review Board to follow up with 21 subjects for six months, but finding funding and HIV-positive patients willing to try the algae therapy has been difficult.

She is cautionary about seaweed's HIV-fighting ability, saying that more patients and longer follow-up are necessary before drawing conclusions.

"At the moment, the results are just very encouraging," Teas said. "But we need to look into this more. Currently 7 percent of the 37 million people in the world who are HIV-positive can afford drug treatment and have access to the drugs-most of them in industrialized countries. Even among those who could take antiretroviral drugs, 25 percent cannot tolerate the side effects of the medications. Reliance on drugs alone to fight the HIV epidemic is a luxury affordable only in highly industrialized nations.

"No one at the U.N. AIDS conference mentioned that even in countries with universal access to antiretroviral drugs, half of the people who took them were dead within five years. Drugs are helping but not curing HIV. And there is evidence that drug resistance is becoming ever more common among the people who can afford drugs."

Reactions to Teas' study at the U.N. AIDS conference ranged from complete disbelief that anyone would entrust treatment of a serious disease to a plant to cautious interest and enthusiasm.

"It was easier talking with the people at the International Seaweed Symposium about HIV because people there knew of the health effects of eating seaweed," she said.

Ideally, she would like to link women's cooperatives cultivating seaweed in Africa and India with doctors in nearby medical communities, and begin trials of algae against HIV.

Three years ago, Teas thought she could simply describe scientific data supporting the use of algae for treatment of HIV to doctors working in African hotspots for AIDS. To Teas' frustration, after a year of correspondence and careful documentation of why algae should work against HIV, she visited the dean of a medical school/hospital in Uganda to whom Teas had sent a box of algae capsules and discovered them being used as a footrest under his desk.

"He just did not know what to do with them. I talked with many of the doctors at the hospital about why seaweed should work, heard their stories of family deaths due to AIDS, and yet no one was willing to try seaweed," Teas said. "The leap of faith from scientific logic to dietary alteration was just too great."

At the July U.N. AIDS Conference, Teas and Mohammad Irimeh, a Jordanian graduate student studying seaweed at the University of Tasmania, distributed brochures and Teas' research paper on algae and AIDS.

"I think my most satisfying interaction came from talking with the commercial sex workers of Bangkok who hosted an exhibit in the community events area. These women face the highest risk from HIV in the world, with more than 60 percent testing HIV positive.

"Initially, the women I talked with pleaded lack of understanding of English. Then, by chance, I had dinner at a local market where a woman was selling packages of seaweed. The next day I took the bag labeled in Thai and one of our brochures and tried again. This time when I offered one of the commercial sex workers the seaweed, she understood what I was saying."

For now, or at least until she is able to obtain funding for a larger HIV/seaweed study, it seems Teas will be spreading the word about AIDS-fighting algae one person at a time.

* Reprinted with permission of USC Times.

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