Scientists have discovered a new variant of the HIV virus. The variant, though not new, had not been discovered before. Scientists have described it as being more virulent than the usual virus. As it turns out, this variant has also been doing the rounds quietly in the Netherlands for some time now. Despite this, the discovery of this variant is not likely to be harmful since the people with this mutated virus have been treated just as well with medicines as other people have. A report by AP states that the frequency of this variant has decreased in recent years.
The discovery was made as scientists tried to understand the continuous evolution of HIV. According to a statement, senior author Christophe Fraser, an epidemiologist with Oxford University, said that this finding will help emphasize the need for testing and treatment so that any variant of HIV is suppressed in a timely manner to prevent transmission.
Different countries have different subtypes of HIV circulating in their populations, and among these subtypes, some can be more severe or transmissible than others. The most common HIV subtype in Western Europe and the United States is Subtype B. In a study of the European HIV patient database, scientists from Oxford discovered 17 cases where patients were found to have more damage to their immune systems and were more infectious than typical cases of subtype B HIV.
Scientists began to investigate the disease records in the Netherlands after most of these cases were found there. The report stated that they found 109 patients who were infected with the VB variant – which stands for virulent subtype B. In this case, the 109 patients were infected with the VB variants, the report stated. Most of these cases are from the 1990s and early 2000s, and the numbers have declined since 2010. A study from Science journal investigated this phenomenon.
Researchers found that patients with the VB variant suffered more immune damage, and their blood contained a higher amount of virus compared to people with other variants. After treatment, however, the results for such patients were the same as for patients infected with other variants, even though it is not yet clear what changes in viral genetics cause this variation.
According to Joel Wertheim, a researcher at the University of California who wasn’t involved in the study, this variant is not a public health crisis, but it highlights the need to gather more information about how viruses evolve over time, as detailed in the report.
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