Scientists are boasting about an interesting new discovery. Apparently soy sauce has the propensity to help treat HIV.
Fox news reports on the link between soy sauce and HIV treatment.
Soy sauce has been around for centuries. Many people consume it at Chinese, Japanese and sushi restaurants. But little did they know that it has a hidden benefit.
One of the biggest soy sauce producing companies, Yamasa, first started to looking into the hidden benefits of soy sauce in the 1980s. “Yamasa in 1988 established a division of food scientists who were tasked with carrying out research on how the immune system responds to a variety of chemicals in food; in 2001, they announced a big find: that the molecule, EFdA, could possibly be used in treatment of HIV,” according to Fox.
The University of Missouri explains how soy sauce molecules help with HIV treatment, “That's because EFdA, along with eight HIV drugs on the market, belongs to a family of compounds that help prevent HIV replication. But the issue with some of those drugs—the researchers single out the commonly used Tenofovir—is that patients develop resistance to them and then need to step up to a more powerful drug. EFdA ‘is less likely to cause resistance’ because it's activated more readily and doesn't break down in the liver and kidneys as rapidly as similar drugs.”
Virologists at the University of Missouri confirmed Yamasa’s findings this week. Fox reports, “University of Missouri’s lab has discovered it ‘works 10 times better than on wild-type HIV that hasn’t become Tenofovir resistant’ and it works even better—70 times better—on HIV that has grown resistant to Tenofovir.” Experts are looking into how they can link this to changing HIV treatment.
