Limes May Guard Women From Infections During Sex

With nearly 14,000 people worldwide

being infected by HIV daily, lime juice

may provide the answer to the decadesold

AIDS/HIV public health issue.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have been

testing lime juice for use as a microbicide

—a compound or substance that is

used to reduce transmission of infections.

It may be used up to eight hours

prior to sexual intercourse that could discreetly

protect women of a wide range of

backgrounds from sexually transmitted

infections, or STIs.

HIV research policy prevention

methods have mainly consisted of abstinence

and the ABC approach—A for

abstinence, B for being faithful and C

for correct and consistent condom use.

“The problem with that is that it

doesn’t work for a lot of women, especially

in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Anke

Hemmerling, a researcher at UC

Berkeley’s School of Public. “They have

no way of controlling their sexuality;

using condoms and contraceptives is

simply not an option.”

The idea of using limes as microbicides

stemmed from Roger Short, a professor

at the University of Melbourne, a

friend of professor Malcolm Potts in the

UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Short observed that people in other

countries have been douching for thousands

of years with limes after intercourse

to prevent pregnancy. Potts thus

sent anthropologists to Nigeria to study

the use of such acidic preparations

because of its ability to destroy HIV.

“We found out that half of all northern

Nigerian sex workers had actually been douching with some type of lime

preparation for years and years after

each client, or after the business day,”

Hemmerling said. “No one has ever

looked into if it was effective in real life

and was safe. We felt that we needed to

test if lime juice was actually safe.”

Hemmerling conducted a study by

recruiting 25 UC Berkeley students from

decal classes, using a 20 percent lime-towater

dilution obtained from animal

studies. The 25 participants used a limejuice

soaked tampon every night for two

weeks, abstained from sex and visited the

Tang Center for a series of tests that

checked for vaginal wall problems.

“If you have sex, there is other irritation

going on, so we wanted to make

sure that the only irritation going on

would be from lime, not your fun weekend.

So, it was really important that people

were abstinent,” Hemmerling said. “I

am happy to report that we did not see

any severe irritation. Nevertheless, don’t

try this at home—don’t start to use lime

or skip condoms tomorrow.”

While Hemmerling’s focus has been

studying the safety of lime juice, other

UC Berkeley researchers have been

equally engaged in pushing to gain support

from pharmaceutical companies

to back the research. It takes about $50

million to develop a drug in the United

States, so the prospects for revenue are

low, researchers said.

“Pharmaceutical companies haven’t

really been investing money in microbicides,

so we were interested in accessing

if there was perhaps a lucrative market

out there that could help offset development

and get big pharma involved,” said

Bethany Young Holt, a lecturer in the

UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

In Holt’s study on microbicides, participants

aged 18 to 30 were recruited

from Berkeley and community colleges.

“We decided to look at college students

—young women, namely, because

there’s a lot of unprotected sex on college

campuses,” Holt said. “We used an

approach that is used by market

researchers to learn what women would

want in a microbicide if it were available.”

The researchers found that approximately

40 percent of women were very

worried about getting pregnant and 36

percent were very worried about getting

an STI, but their concern about contracting

HIV was not very high. However, 69 percent of the participants were interested

in purchasing their ideal microbicide

if it were available in the market.

The ideal microbicide to this group

would protect against STIs, offer as much

protection as condoms and be available

over the counter, among other things.

The price of buying the microbicide

would vary depending on manufacturer.

When they are exported, organizations

such as the World Health Organization

and the United Nations could help subsidize

the cost, researchers said.

“Ideally, they won’t cost any more than

what people pay for condoms or birth

control,” Holt said. “And initially, they’re

going to be available by prescription only,

but eventually the idea is that you’ll be

able to go to your 7-Eleven and get them.”

Researchers hope that microbicide

research and development will continue

to garner the necessary support from policymakers,

the pharmaceutical industry and the government.

“We know that negotiating your sex

life and condom use—even in the U.S.—

is usually hard and this could be an alternative

to that,” Hemmerling said. “We

showed that, yes, there is a market in the

first-world too, and maybe big pharma

should think again.”

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