Scientists identify a more aggressive HIV strain in West Africa

A team of HIV researchers from Sweden have identified a new HIV strain that progresses to AIDS more than 2 years faster than previously identified strains.


The new strain called A3/02, according to Angelica Palm, one of the researchers, is a combination of the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau, she said it develops into AIDS within five years, up to two-and-a-half years faster than either of its parent strains.

In the report of the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the researchers described the strain as a recombinant and appears when a person becomes infected by two different strains, allowing DNA to fuse and create a new one.

They warned that recombinant strains may spread more rapidly, in part from immigration to the United State or Europe, and that there are likely many more that still haven’t been identified. 

They however allayed fears on the ability of current drugs to treat the recombinant strain.
“The good news is that as far as we know, the medicines that are available today are equally functional on all different subtypes of variants,” Palm said.

The study comes on the heels of a new report by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control that found about 131,000 people in Europe had contracted HIV in 2012, an 8% increase from the year before. As reported AIDS cases in western Europe dropped 48% between 2006 and 2012, the number of new diagnoses in the eastern region rose by 113%.

0 comments:

Post a Comment