First HIV hybrid formed in a human revealed | New Scientist: The first case of two strains of HIV combining to form a new hybrid virus in a human has been revealed by researchers. More than one type of the deadly virus can infect a person at the same time - a state called "superinfection". Scientists have long suspected that different strains could combine to produce a hybrid - but this had never been demonstrated before. Now scientists have shown that two major subtypes of HIV-1 swapped genes with each other to form an entirely new virus in a female patient. Furthermore, the hybrid took over from the original infections to become the dominant virus in the woman's body. This caused her condition, which had been relatively stable, to rapidly deteriorate. As well as worsening the outlook for individual patients, this ability of HIV strains to recombine could pose a crucial stumbling block in the hunt for an AIDS vaccine. "Recombination resulting from superinfection with diverse strains may pose problems for eliciting the broad immune responses necessary for an effective vaccine," said Harold Burger, of the Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York, who led the research.
So not only is it possible for unprotected sex to lead to infection with more than one strain of HIV, but they can get together and have little HIV babies! How very special!
Reasonably speaking, then, you would need to find vaccines against all known strains of HIV, and you would need to give them to people at the same time to prevent the virus from doing this sort of recombination. Which may be neither realistic nor possible.
And in the meantime, it looks as if drugs are becoming increasingly less useful. Not a surprise, precisely, but the speed with which people are becoming resistant is surely alarming.
Tenth of H.I.V. Cases in a Study in Europe Are Resistant to Drugs (NY Times, July 17, 2003, registration required): The biggest study, so far, of resistance to AIDS drugs, to be released today at an international AIDS conference in Paris, finds that about 10 percent of all newly infected patients in Europe are infected with drug-resistant strains. The researcher who led the study called the level of resistance to some anti-AIDS drugs "surprisingly high." Other scientists at the conference agreed that the findings had worldwide public health implications and made the hunt for new classes of AIDS drugs even more critical. They said the figure suggested that many AIDS patients who are in treatment go back to engaging in high-risk sex or needle-sharing.....
Yes, I dare say they do.
Posted by iain at July 15, 2003 10:10 AM
