Fight Against AIDS Continues: Researchers Discover New, Aggressive HIV Strain in West Africa

Researchers from Sweden have found an HIV strain in West Africa that leads to faster development of AIDS than other strains.

There are at least 60 different strains of HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus). HIV-1 types have the shortest development period, rapidly growing from an infection to AIDS in about five years, when compared to other strains.

Most geographical regions in the world have one or two strains of HIV being transmitted. If a person gets infected with two strains, they can form a deadly recombinant strain.

The study was conducted by researchers at Lund University.       

"Recombinants seem to be more vigorous and more aggressive than the strains from which they developed", explained Angelica Palm, a doctoral student at Lund University.

For the study, researchers studied a strain called A3/02. The strain is a cross between two most common strains in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa - 02AG and A3.

A3/02 was previously described by Joakim Esbjörnsson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford.

 "HIV is an extremely dynamic and variable virus. New subtypes and recombinant forms of HIV-1 have been introduced to our part of the world, and it is highly likely that there are a large number of circulating recombinants of which we know little or nothing. We therefore need to be aware of how the HIV-1 epidemic changes over time", said Patrik Medstrand, Professor of Clinical Virology at Lund University, according to a news release.

For now, the strain seems to be confined to West Africa. However, research has shown that various strains are now emerging due to people traveling to different countries. Countries with high immigration such as the U.S. and the U.K. are hotspots for recombinant viruses to form and grow.

The study is published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Some 34 million people in the world are now living with HIV. Of these, about 54 percent people have access to antiretroviral therapy, according to World Health Organization.

For decades, researchers have been trying to understand how HIV causes infection and now we have several studies claiming to have found the elusive "cure for HIV/ADIS". Recently, scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital reported that HIV-positive people receiving bone-marrow transplant had lower levels of the virus in their body. Also, a team of U.S. doctors had announced that they had successfully "cured" a baby of HIV.