A new – highly pathogenic – variant of HIV, which seems to have been circulating in the country since the 1990s, scientists have identified in the Netherlands, but it has not been realized until now. So far, in addition to the Netherlands, two more people have been found, one in Belgium and one in Switzerland, with the new VB variant, but it is possible that there are others in Europe who have not yet been identified, which requires new genetic analyzes based on the genome of the VB strain that the researchers made freely available for this very reason.
Fortunately, although the new variant is more contagious among humans and speeds up the chances of causing AIDS, existing drugs are still effective against it, stopping both AIDS exacerbation and virus transmission, and the new strain can also detected by current tests. However, this discovery, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a reminder – and a warning – that a rapidly evolving virus does not always become less dangerous over time.
Molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodkroft of the Swiss University of Bern pointed out that recent reports that the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causes milder Covid-19 disease have fueled a narrative that the virus is definitely less lethal. As he said, “things do not work that way. “Although HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are different in many ways, it is not a given that the coronavirus will become milder.”
Researchers at the BEEHIVE Understanding Biology and Epidemiology of HIV program, led by Dr. Chris Wimand of the University of Oxford School of Medicine, who published the paper in the journal Science, analyzed blood samples. of 6,700 people living with HIV, of whom 109 were found to have the new variant. Those infected with the hitherto unknown VB had 3.5 to 5.5 times higher levels of the virus in their body (higher viral load). They also had lower levels of antibodies (reducing CD4 T immunocytes at twice the rate) against HIV and an increased chance of transmitting the virus to other people.
Some 38 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV and 33 million have died, according to the World Health Organization, and new infections have been declining over the past decade thanks to the widespread use of drugs that kill the virus. People with the VB variant have been found to be more likely to develop AIDS within two to three years of being infected, faster than usual (six to ten years), if the patient does not receive adequate antiretroviral therapy in the meantime. Medication.
Researchers believe that the new HIV strain justifies increased vigilance, but does not pose a serious threat to public health, as it responds to the available treatments, nor does it appear to impair the effectiveness of pre-infection medications. “All the tools in our arsenal continue to work,” said Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego.
HIV is one of the fastest mutating viruses ever found. It varies from person to person, sometimes even to the same person over time. The discovery in the Netherlands shows how several mutations in a single HIV strain can give it particularly high pathogenicity and transmissibility.
In any case, according to scientists, the discovery shows that it is more important than ever for people at high risk to get tested regularly for HIV and for carriers of the virus to start treatment immediately. People with HIV – regardless of the variant they are infected with (including VB) – can now, thanks to medication, have an almost normal life expectancy. If they regularly follow the doses of their treatment, HIV becomes undetectable in their body, but without being “uprooted”.
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