Bence Ferdinandy, Dr. Viktor Müller, and colleagues from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary have found that new strains of HIV do not spread as quickly as the first strain of the virus that infected a given population. The discovery is both good news and bad news for researchers seeking a cure or at least a control for the spread of HIV.
HIV is one of the most facile diseases known. The virus changes to protect itself. This survival tactic is what has slowed the spread of new strains of HIV for the present.
The researchers found that the first strain of HIV to establish dominance in any group of people protects itself from any new variants of HIV that may invade the same population. Part of the protection from new variants of HIV is the long life expectancy of people that acquired the original version of HIV that is dominant in any given population or region of the world. Part of the longer life expectancy of people that have HIV is due to HIV therapies.
The second reason for the slower spread of new strains of HIV is that the global HIV epidemic may not be caused by the most transmissible variant of HIV. The bad news is that a new more virulent and more easily transmissible version of HIV could develop due to the rapidity of mutation of HIV due to stressors. The stressors could be drugs, movement of people due to natural disaster, or a mutation that is dominated by an insect vector transmission.
