Oxford researchers announced on Thursday that a new super-mutant HIV strain has been detected in the Netherlands which damages the immune system more quickly than the current versions of the virus.
Around 109 individuals were infected with this new variant called “VB variant” (for virulent subtype B), according to a study by Oxford University’s Big Data Institute and the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation published in the Science journal.
“We discovered a highly virulent variant of subtype-B HIV-1 in the Netherlands. One hundred nine individuals with this variant had a 0.54 to 0.74 log10 increase (i.e., a ~3.5-fold to 5.5-fold increase) in viral load compared with, and exhibited CD4 cell decline twice as fast as, 6604 individuals with other subtype-B strains,” according to the findings of the study.
People infected with this new strain will develop AIDS more quickly as it damages the immune system faster.
More from France 24:
Their analysis, published Thursday in the journal “Science,” showed that patients infected with what they call the “VB variant” had 3.5 to 5.5 times higher levels of the virus in their blood than those infected with other variants, as well as a more rapidly fading immune system.
However, the study also found that after starting treatment, individuals with the VB variant had similar immune system recovery and survival to individuals with other HIV variants.
“There’s no cause for alarm with this new viral variant,” said Oxford epidemiologist Chris Wymant, the lead author on the paper, in an interview with AFP.
“Our findings emphasize the importance of World Health Organization guidance that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment,” said co-author Christophe Fraser, also an Oxford researcher, in a press release announcing the findings.
The work also supports the theory that viruses can evolve to become more virulent, a widely-hypothesized idea for which few real-world examples have been found.
The Delta variant of the novel coronavirus was another recent example.
The discovery of the HIV variant should therefore “be a warning that we should never be overconfident about saying viruses will just evolve to become milder,” said Wymant to AFP.
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