- A new strain of HIV has been discovered in the Netherlands.
- The strain dubbed the VB variant appears to lead to more severe disease more quickly.
- People with this strain also tended to have a higher viral load.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that mutations in a virus can significantly change a pathogen’s infectiousness and severity of the disease.
Now, new research from the University of Oxford finds a new variant of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, that is potentially more infectious and could more seriously affect the immune system.
So far, 109 people, most of whom live in the Netherlands, have the variant.
New HIV variant causes illness twice as fast
The new strain, called the VB variant, damages the immune system, weakening people’s ability to fight everyday infections and diseases much faster than the previous HIV strains, scientists say.
It also means that people who contract the new variant may develop AIDS faster.
Researchers also found that VB has a viral load (the amount of virus detected in blood) 3.5 to 5.5 times higher than the current strain, indicating that it could also be more infectious
Immune system damage occurred twice as fast
The CD4+T cell decline (a sign of immune damage by HIV) was twice as fast in people with the variant, researchers say.
“By the time they were diagnosed, these individuals were vulnerable to developing AIDS within 2 to 3 years,” study authors wrote.
Absent treatment, critically low CD4 cell counts “with long-term clinical consequences” is expected to happen 9 months after diagnosis on average for people in their 30s with VB variant, they said.
“The VB variant’s ability to facilitate transmission, damage the immune system, and interrupt treatment is a reminder how smart the virus is evolving over time,” said Anthony J. Santella, DrPH, MCHES, professor of Health Administration and Policy at the University of New Haven.javascript:false0 seconds of 15 secondsVolume 0%
