HIV Strain Found In Cuba Could be the Most Aggressive Ever Studied In Humans

http://bit.ly/1zfNXza Researchers recently identified an aggressive new strain of human immunodeficiency virus in Cuba that advances to Aids much faster than the average strain, but this variant of the virus may be the most aggressive ever studied in humans. Other fast-acting variants of HIV exist, but the Cuban strain is the first in which all observed patients infected with a particular strain of HIV progress to Aids at the accelerated rate, Anne Mieke Vandamme, the researcher from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium who published findings on the Cuban strain, told The Independent. “The difference is that with most clades, only a minority of patients infected with a virus from that clade progress so fast,” Dr Vandamme said, using the word clade to mean subtype of HIV. “Here, all patients in our cohort infected with a virus from the CRF19 variant progress to Aids within 3 years. This is the first variant where this has been noted.” Only 73 patients have been studied so far, but the 73 progressed to Aids within a median time of 1.4 years after being infected with HIV. The average HIV strain advances to Aids within a median time of 9.8 years. http://ind.pn/1AVPaQW