By Jim Hoft
Oxford researchers announced on Thursday that a new super-mutant HIV strain has been detected in the Netherlands which damages the immune system more quickly than the current versions of the virus.
Around 109 individuals were infected with this new variant called “VB variant” (for virulent subtype B), according to a study by Oxford University’s Big Data Institute and the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation published in the Science journal.
“We discovered a highly virulent variant of subtype-B HIV-1 in the Netherlands. One hundred nine individuals with this variant had a 0.54 to 0.74 log10 increase (i.e., a ~3.5-fold to 5.5-fold increase) in viral load compared with, and exhibited CD4 cell decline twice as fast as, 6604 individuals with other subtype-B strains,” according to the findings of the study.
People infected with this new strain will develop AIDS more quickly as it damages the immune system faster.