Vitamin therapy may help AIDS victims

According to the study released on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine a daily multivitamin tablet may slow the progress of the AIDS virus allowing doctors to delay treatment of the deadly disease. This finding is especially helpful in developing countries where resources are scarce.

It was found during the study that B Vitamins, along with vitamins C and E, may also reduce the symptoms of the disease, including fatigue, nausea, vomiting, difficulty swallowing, and mouth and stomach problems.

Although the benefits of multivitamin therapy, which costs about $15 per year, were statistically significant, they were not that big. The chance of dying or developing an advanced case of HIV was 24.7 percent among the vitamin recipients, compared to 31.3 percent among women who received placebo tablets instead.

However, when vitamin A had been used in the treatment, the benefits decreased and those women fared about as well as the volunteers getting placebos.

The researchers said, those findings, correlate with the results of previous research that has shown vitamin A supplements to increase the likelihood that a mother will spread HIV to her child.