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%.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment