An ongoing three-year traditional Chinese medical trial has achieved breakthroughs in combating HIV/AIDS, Guang'anmen Hospital announced Saturday.

A Chinese pharmacy worker prepares herbs at the Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in Dongcheng district on July 23 last year.

The 565 AIDS patients' condition and immune systems were reportedly remarkably improved, with coughing and tiredness significantly lessened since the trial began in 2008, according to the Beijing Daily.

Animal experiments had demonstrated their treatment could suppress multiplication of the HIV-1 virus in cells, according to the Guang'anmen Hospital website report on the international symposium of traditional Chinese medicine for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment on October 16 and 17.

Western medical treatment like Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) can kill almost all the viruses in the blood, said AIDS expert Jin Wei, a professor with the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, but the virus could not be totally eliminated.

The Chinese method strengthens the immune system.

"It would be ideal if the two methods could be combined together," she said.

"The western method kills most of the virus and the Chinese medicine makes the body stronger."

HAART is expensive and has strong side effects, hospital president Zhang Jie was quoted as saying, leaving 10-15 percent of patients unable to rebuild their immune system after the treatment.

"The Chinese medicine is cheap, almost side effect-free and can boost the improvement of the immune system," he said.

Not everyone was impressed with the alleged advance of the city hospital, a subsidiary of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.

"Government experts receive special funding from the nation. If they work hard and invent a cure, they will lose their funding," said a staff member of a Hong Kong-based traditional Chinese medicine company who requested anonymity. This created a disincentive to find a cure, he argued angrily.

The Chinese government sets overly strict rules on medical trials, he said. In this way, private organizations like his own were effectively ruled out of conducting AIDS research, he said.

"As the government doesn't support us, we moved to Africa to conduct traditional Chinese medicine experiments and we have a close relationship with the health administration of one African nation."

In that experiment, "the antigen turned negative," he said. This indicated they had found a cure, he asserted.

He was unwilling to reveal the name of the nation, as the alleged spectacular result has not been made public or yet proven effective by international societies.

(Xinhua News Agency October 18, 2010)