Cape Town, Beritasatu.com- A 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carries the virus corona new for 216 days. As reported BusinessInsider, Friday (4/6/2021), a new study found the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations.
The case report, which has not yet been peer reviewed, was published as a preprint on medRxiv on Thursday (3/6). The unnamed woman was identified as a 36-year-old woman living in South Africa.
The coronavirus accumulated 13 mutations in the spike protein, which is known to help the virus escape immune responses, and 19 other mutations that can change the behavior of the virus.
The scientists only saw this case because the woman was enrolled in a study of 300 people with HIV who looked at their immune response to Covid-19.
To Times, the researchers also found that four other people with HIV had been carrying the coronavirus for more than a month.
Some patients who are immunosuppressed for other reasons appear to carry the coronavirus for a long time, Ambrosini said. For example, he said, there have been case reports of people with kidney transplants testing positive for almost a year.
The findings could be particularly important for Africa – which recorded 20.6 million of the 37.6 million people living with HIV in 2020. On Friday, the WHO warned that a sharp rise in infections could turn into a third wave of Covid-19 across the continent. .
It is unclear whether the mutation he carried was passed on to anyone else.
If more such cases are found, it raises the prospect that HIV infection could be a source of new variants simply because patients can carry the virus longer, Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and a researcher from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. in Durban. author, to Times.
Juan Ambrosini, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Barcelona, said. Indeed, the woman in the case study was immunosuppressed.
“These findings are important for the control of Covid-19 because these patients can be a source of continuous transmission and evolution of the virus,” said Ambrosini.
The findings could be particularly important for Africa – which had 20.6 million of the 37.6 million people living with HIV in 2020. On Friday, the WHO warned that a sharp rise in infections could turn into a third wave of Covid-19 worldwide. continent.
Source: BeritaSatu.com
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