Blood is taken from a patient in a laboratory for an HIV test. Photo: Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert/dpa
Source: dpa-infocom GmbH
The VB variant of HIV-1 has a higher viral load, is more transmissible, and has the potential to cause greater damage to the immune system.
Oxford (dpa) – In a long-term study, researchers have discovered a previously unknown, probably more contagious variant of the HI virus in the Netherlands.
The so-called VB variant of HIV-1 has a viral load that is around 3.5 to 5.5 times higher, is easier to transmit and has the potential to cause greater damage to the immune system, write the scientists at the British University of Oxford in the journal Science. . However, two German experts do not see the danger of the new variant spreading quickly.
According to the study, there is probably no greater danger for infected people in treatment: after the start of treatment, VB patients had a similar course to other patients. The findings make it all the more important that people at some risk of HIV have access to regular testing to enable early diagnosis and treatment, it said. “That limits the time in which HIV can damage the immune system and endanger health,” said one of the Oxford researchers involved, Christophe Fraser, according to a statement.
17 cases of the variant, 15 of them from the Netherlands
The VB variant was first discovered in a long-term monitoring project called Beehive, which collects and analyzes samples from Europe and Uganda. 17 cases of the variant were noticed, 15 of them from the Netherlands. Tests of thousands more patients tested in the Netherlands found 92 more infected with the VB variant. This is said to have spread throughout the country during the 1980s and 1990s. According to the researchers, however, the spread has slowed down again since around 2010.
The study is “another piece of the puzzle for our understanding of the evolution of HIV,” said virologist Maximilian Muenchoff from the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich the German Press Agency. However, the expert has little concern that the variant could give new impetus to the HIV epidemic. “Although the effects are statistically significant, they are rather secondary in the broader epidemiological context.” You can also see that from the fact that the variant has been circulating for decades without having displaced other variants. For treated patients, the therapy and a healthy lifestyle are more important than the virological factors anyway.
The virologist Hans-Georg Kräusslich from the university Heidelberg does not expect that the discovered variant will lead to a faster progression of the HIV infection to an AIDS disease and said the dpa: “In view of the long period and the very small number speaks for a rapid spread.”
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