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news 2000
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MONTPELLIER, France (AFP) - French and African
researchers said Friday that strains of the AIDS virus
were mutating, a development with potentially alarming
repercussions on testing and treatment for the infection.
Scientists at the Research Institute for Development
(IRD) in Montpellier said they had found that two strains
of the Type 1 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),
previously thought to be genetically far apart, had
combined together.
There are two main types of HIV virus, the precursor to
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
HIV-1, the most widespread, has three strains -- M, N
and O -- that each have different characteristics.
Until now, conventional thinking was that these groups
were so divergent -- genetically more than 50 percent
dissimilar -- that there was no risk of recombination
between them.
But researchers at the IRD's retrovirus laboratory,
working with counterparts in the West African country of
Cameroon, said they had isolated and identified a live
strain that had combined from group M and group O.
"We found a patient in Cameroon who had been infected
by the two strains and, against all our expectations, we
found that the two strains had merged, forming a new
variant," the head of the team, Martine Peeters, told
AFP.
"This supposes that even viruses which are genetically far
apart can mix and form a completely new variant."
The discovery, reported in a US publication, the Journal
of Virology, could have grave implications in how the
AIDS virus is spread, as well as the conventional
methods for testing and treating it, she said.
"At the moment, group O is rare. But the fact that it can
recombine with another virus may change its
characteristics and make it more virulent," she said.
Another problem is screening. Because O is rare, viruses
in this group sometimes cannot be detected using
commercially-available test kits, and they are resistant to
certain anti-retroviral treatments.
Cameroon has been the theatre of a previous landmark
discovery in AIDS research.
It was there that a French researcher, Francois Simon,
first identified the group N strain in September 1998.
Group N is genetically close to a virus that prevails in
chimpanzees, leading to speculation that humans
contracted it from eating ape meat. The HIV strain that is
most prevalent in western countries is Group M.
The other type of AIDS virus, HIV-2, is mainly prevalent
in Africa's Great Lakes region.
- Robert Anderson
Member Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
http://www.psrg.org.nz
[Source: posting to the gE@naturallaw.org.nz list 15 Mar 2000 "Bob Anderson" roberta@clear.net.nz]
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15 March
ecoglobe
news 2000
link to this item http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/news2000/news2000.htm#aids1530">