For those who become infected with a “traditional” variant of HIV, it takes an average of ten years – without medication – before AIDS breaks out. “Between the ages of nine and twelve, you dip below a critical limit,” says Linos Vandekerckhove, head of the HIV Reference Center and the HIV Cure Research Center at Ghent University Hospital.
With this variant it goes a lot faster: one year. With the new variant, the virus concentration is thousands of times higher than normal, so it performs its decomposition work a lot faster. “It is the first time that a variant has been discovered that is so clearly more sickening,” says Vandekerckhove.
It is the first time that a variant has been discovered that is so clearly more sickening
The new variant – reported by De Standaard – was discovered by British researchers at the University of Oxford. They published about this in the prestigious journal Science. Cases have already been discovered, especially in the Netherlands, but also in Belgium and Switzerland.
How bad is that news?
Is that bad news? For a part certainly. Vandekerckhove: “It is the first time that the immunity drops so quickly in people who are infected.”
But not for another piece. The existing medicines also help against the new variant, it is only important to treat patients as quickly as possible. And also: “The variant originated thirty years ago, but it has only now been clearly mapped. So it is not that bad with its distribution.”
At the same time, we don’t know much about the distribution of the new variant. Of the 40 million seropositives in the world – and the 18,000 in Belgium – we usually do not know which variant they are infected with. And certainly not in sub-Saharan Africa, where 1 in 4 patients do not even have access to therapy.
Source: vrtnws.be and ‘The Morning’
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