Genetic research demonstrates how viruses can mutate less mildly even after decades of coexistence with humans. In this case, the variant that arose in the Netherlands but is already in decline: drugs and surveillance policies have worked
The researchers of the Big Data Institute University of Oxford discovered one variant of
‘HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) spread in the Netherlands more contagious and capable of making progress more rapidly towards a disease serious.
The story of the discovery
The research results, published on Thursday in the magazine Science
, show how HIV can change in a less mild way even after decades of living with man.
Existing drugs work very well to treat even very virulent variants like this one, reducing transmission and reducing the possibility of developing serious diseases, in fact the policies adopted in the Netherlands in the last ten years or so (improve access to treatment, subject people to tests the first possible, get her to start treatment as soon as possible) have helped to reduce the number of patients who have encountered the variant. We didn’t know it existed until our studies – said the lead author of the research, Chris Wyman -: probably emerged in the late 1980s, took hold around 2000 and then slowed down around 2010. Chris Wyman at the end of 2018 noticed something interesting in a database for a project called BEEHIVE, which collects HIV samples from Uganda and several European countries. There was a recent group of 17 samples showing many unusual mutations and 15 of the samples were from the Netherlands. Wymant and his team looked at another Dutch study with more data and found a total of 109 people with this particular variant, patients dating back to 1992. From there, the identification.
Features
People with this variant have one viral load 3 to 4 times higher than normal for people with HIV. This feature means that the virus progresses into one severe disease 2 times faster and it also makes it more contagious.
Genetics studies like this one require a lot of time and resources and they do not serve so much to face the present as to understand how the HIV virus moves and evolves what are the most useful health interventions. In particular, as the variant moves quickly, people need to be given medication as quickly as possible. Early testing or frequent testing and immediate initiation of treatment are the way to go. The goal is not to identify a specific variant, but to diagnose new HIV cases so that treatment can begin as soon as possible. This kind of policy, undertaken in the Netherlands without knowing about the mutation, has helped health systems limit it before researchers even identified it.
SARS-CoV-2 won’t necessarily be milder
The warning to the world, which is now grappling with Covid variants, which: Viruses don’t always weaken over time. We should never underestimate the potential for viral evolution, says Joel Wertheim, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study but wrote a comment on Science
on the search results. The SARS-CoV-2 variants demonstrate that this virus is evolving repeatedly to be more transmissible and not all of these adaptive variants are in fact more virulent. However, the Delta variant that dominated global cases in late 2021 shows it as SARS-CoV-2 it could evolve to be both more transmissible and more virulentconcludes Wertheim.
February 7, 2022 (change February 7, 2022 | 11:11)
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