The new variant destroys white blood cells twice as fast, a real key to the immune system. On the other hand, the variant remains receptive to HIV treatment.
AIDS continues to plague the world. Despite scientific advances and preventive measures taken in all countries to stop this old disease, the World Health Organization announced on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, the discovery in the Netherlands of a more virulent and contagious variant of HIV that proves once once more the urgency of stopping the pandemic and ensuring the screening and treatment of all patients. Almost 10 million people living with HIV are still not on antiretroviral therapy.
This variant spread worryingly in the Netherlands during the first weeks of this year before starting to decline slightly thanks to ongoing detection and treatment programmes. The most dangerous thing regarding this new variant is that people living with this variant experience a rate of decline of the immune system twice as high.
According to the UN AIDS agency, people carrying this variant have a higher HIV viral load. They are vulnerable to the development of AIDS two to three times faster following diagnosis than if they lived with other strains of the virus.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford, was the first to discover subtype B of the virus. The study also revealed that the new variant destroys white blood cells twice as fast, the real key to the immune system. But that the treatments usually recommended (antiretroviral) fight it equally effectively. “The public remains receptive to HIV treatment,” UNAIDS said.
More broadly, this newly identified variant does not pose a major threat to public health but underlines the urgency of accelerating efforts to halt the HIV pandemic.
“We urgently need to deploy cutting-edge medical innovations in a way that reaches the communities that need them most. Whether it’s HIV treatment or Covid-19 vaccines, unequal access perpetuates pandemics in a way that harms us all,” said Eamonn Murphy, UNAIDS acting Deputy Executive Director.
Ten million people living with HIV worldwide are not yet on treatment, fuelling the continued spread of the virus and the potential for new variants.
HIV remains the deadliest pandemic of our time, according to the UN, which estimates that 80 million people have been infected with the virus, for which there is still no vaccine or treatment.
Some 36 million people have died from AIDS-related diseases since the beginning of the pandemic, and 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2020. Of the 38 million people living with HIV today, 28 million are undergoing life-saving antiretroviral therapy that keeps them alive and healthy and therefore prevents the transmission of the virus.
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