New Drug-Resistant HIV Strain Reported In NYC
NEW YORK -- A rare strain of HIV that is highly resistant to virtually all anti-retroviral drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS was detected in a New York City man last week, city health officials announced Friday.
The extent of the spread is unknown, but they called a news conference to say the situation was alarming. "We consider this a major potential problem," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The department issued an alert to all hospitals and doctors in the city to test all newly detected HIV cases for evidence of the rare strain.
Some AIDS specialists around the country expressed skepticism about the alarm, believing that it might be an isolated case related to the patient's immune system.
The virus was found in an unidentified man in his mid-40s who engaged in unprotected anal sex with other men on multiple occasions while he was using crystal methamphetamine. He is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of partners, according to a person familiar with the case.
While HIV strains that are resistant to some anti-retroviral drugs have been on the rise in recent years, city and federal officials said the new case is worrisome for several reasons.
The viral strain was resistant to three of the four classes of drugs used to treat HIV from the moment the patient was infected. Typically, drug resistance comes after a patient is treated with retro-viral drugs, often because they veer from the prescribed course. But, in this case, the drug resistance comes in combination with a rapid transformation into AIDS.
Both of those things have been seen before, but are not believed to have occurred together.
Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, said it is well known that some patients progress from initial infection to full-blown AIDS very rapidly, but this is usually because the patient is highly susceptible, not because the virus was virulent.
This case is rare but not necessarily alarming, he said.
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