The Hindu : International : New AIDS peril puts America on high alert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 14, 2005

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International

New AIDS peril puts America on high alert

By Robin McKie

LONDON, FEB. 13. A strain of HIV that is highly resistant to almost all anti-retroviral drugs and which leads to the rapid onset of AIDS has been detected in New York. Doctors and hospitals across the city have been placed on alert and told to test all new HIV cases for evidence of the strain.

The development has alarmed city health officials and was described as "a scary phenomenon" by U.S. AIDS expert, David Ho. In addition, Robin Weiss, professor of viral oncology at University College, London, described the case as "worrying."

"We are going to have watch this very carefully," Prof. Weiss said.

The strain has so far been found in only one person, a New York man in his mid-forties, but it is still causing considerable worry among health officials.

The man — who has not been named — is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of partners. He complained of feeling ill in November, was found to be HIV positive in December and had developed AIDS in January.

"This a major potential problem," Dr. Thomas Frieden, of New York's Department of Health, told the New York Times.

Dr. Frieden was speaking at a news conference, attended by dozens of AIDS experts and community leaders and which was hurriedly arranged on Friday.

Scientists have found the new strain is resistant to three of the four classes of drugs used to treat HIV and that this resistance was combined with a rapid transformation from HIV infection into AIDS. Both phenomena have been seen before, but not together.

The patient is now being treated using Enfuvirtide, which is still proving to be effective, though doctors warn that single-drug therapy is rarely effective against AIDS in the long term. —

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