NYT: Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says

Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says
By MARC SANTORA

Published: March 18, 2005


A genetic study of a rare strain of AIDS that led New York City health officials to issue a public warning last month will be published today, allowing experts from around the world to more accurately evaluate the scientific basis of the alert.

The study, appearing in The Lancet, a medical journal, shows the virus to be resistant to nearly all licensed drugs and particularly aggressive. Most of the study's details were disclosed earlier during an AIDS conference in Boston. The report is based on the work of a team of researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan led by Dr. David D. Ho and Dr. Martin Markowitz.

There has been debate about the importance of the discovery of the rare strain since the city went public with the case on Feb. 11, with some scientists saying that a single case did not warrant much concern. Some gay activist groups also reacted skeptically, saying public health officials exploited the case to scare gay men into practicing safe sex....

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The case involves a gay man in his late 40's who tested positive for H.I.V. in December. The virus was resistant to nearly every drug treatment and progressed rapidly from infection to fully developed AIDS....

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Drug resistance and rapid progression of the virus have both been seen at different times, but the intersection of the two is what the scientists found alarming. "The public health ramifications of such a case are great," the scientists wrote in the journal....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/nyregion/18aids.html

the gay community.

Actual fact: This government has done NOTHING to fund the education of people about safe-sex or to fund the fight against AIDS.

The transmission of 3-DCR signals a new AIDS era

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=dcr&btnG=Search+News

caused by poor adherence to medication.

Super Herpes, super chlamydia, super TB, super staph, super syphilis, and super ghonorrhea.

None of this should be suprising to anyone - what is suprising is how little coverage it's getting.

It is very important - because when AIDS first debuted, it was relatively weak and led to symptomology only after years of infection; a process which allowed the infection to spread globally.

In a very rapid progressing disease (not airborne), the mutation tends to kill itself out, so there may actually be less to be alarmed about in this case than we're being led to believe.

On the other hand though, the stupid queen that said it was being used to scare gay men into practicing safe sex is already suffering from terminal stupidity. You're supposed practice safe sex no matter what.

Although most of the media reports are focused on today's Lancet article, it really just makes public the tests that were described last month showing that the same virus had 3 properties, Resistance to 19 drugs, dual receptor use, and a normal replication capacity (usually the replication capacity decreases when drug resistance is acquired).

The above data was in vitro results which did not involve host factors or address transmissibility. However, now a partner of the NYC man has been described, He is in CT and is infected with HIV that is resistant to 19 drugs (3-DCR CT).

Thus, it appears that transmission may be relatively efficient, especially since the NYC patient has had 100's of partners.

http://news.google.com/news?q=dcr%20hiv&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wn

Thus, it appears that transmission may be relatively efficient, especially since the NYC patient has had 100's of partners.

:think:

I don't get it.

A person would have to be living a hermit's existence not to know about HIV; it's been around for as long as I can remember. How can someone (anyone who isn't overtly suicidal/homicidal) do things like that, knowing full well what all's at stake?

If educating people doesn't work, what the hell do you do?

It sounds like the number of partners after 3-DCR infection was around 10. Antivirals created a chronic manageable disease mindset for HIV.

That has now changed

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&tab=nn&ie=UTF-8&q=hiv+dcr+new+york

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Good energy to you - may you find the perfect life partner!

We have RT inhibitors, protease inhibitors, and many companies are in the process of developing integrase inhibitors.

Drug resistant strains of HIV continue to develop.

Safe sex is not passe, it is not a thing of the '80s.

Please, please, please, those who need to, continue practicing safe sex.

...both for contracting AIDS in general and for getting this new strain. It makes you horny for hours and hours (hence, if one is at a sex club or bathhouse, much more likely to have many many partners) and lowers your self-preservation skills (hence much more likely to have unprotected anal sex). It also tends to make people push past their pain thresholds, so that one is more likely to end up exchanging blood as well as semen (this is not even talking about the needle risk). And, too, certain ways of taking it make one's mucous membranes especially vulnerable to tearing and hence to infection.

Not to mention, if you're a meth user, you already likely have some serious health issues and hence a pre-compromised immune system.

Obviously take with a grain of salt as I can't find the reference at the moment.