All
treatment news this month comes from the 9th Retrovirus Conference, held
on 24-28 February in Seattle, USA.
Compiled and edited by Gus Cairns
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Man brings back new 'supervirus'
The first absolutely unequivocal case of HIV 'superinfection' was reported
at the Retrovirus Conference.
Professor Bernard Hirschel of Geneva reported on a patient infected with
one strain of HIV who, after a holiday in Brazil, brought back with him
a new and much more virulent strain of HIV, which took over from his previous
infection.
The case was so clear because the patient was
Superinfection proof: the poster shows the patient's old HIV infection (top row of blobs) being overwhelmed by the new one (bottom row)
already on a study of treatment in early HIV infection. His initial virus type was already well studied, and it could be proved that the more virulent strain was genuinely new and had not been 'hiding' behind the other one.
Flexible new drug gets docs excited
These days, you don't often hear HIV researchers describe a new drug's performance as "remarkable", let alone "stunning", but these were words used at the 9th Retrovirus Conference to describe the effects of TMC 125, a new drug in the non-nucleoside (NNRTI) class.
London's professor Brian Gazzard and Joep Lange of the Netherlands
