A supermutant strain of HIV that infects infected people twice as fast as previous versions of the virus has been discovered in the Netherlands. The new strain, called the VB variant, has infected at least 109 people, according to a University of Oxford study.
The strain damages the immune system and weakens a person’s ability to fight daily infections and illnesses more quickly than previous versions of the virus. This means that those who contract this strain may develop AIDS more quickly.
In addition, the VB variant has a viral load 3.5 to 5.5 times higher than the current strain, meaning those who are infected are more likely to transmit the virus to others.
The good news, however, is that once treatment is started, people with the VB variant experience the same immune system recovery and survival as people infected with other strains of HIV.
However, scientists warn that the rapid decline in health after infection with VB means that early detection and early treatment are key.
In the UK, for example, people are encouraged to be tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections at least once a year, and men who have sex with men once every three months.
The discovery, published in the journal Science, is the result of an international collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation. The team, which is collecting HIV samples from across Europe and Uganda, has found 17 cases of the new strain.
Two cases have been identified in Switzerland and Belgium.
While 15 samples with the VB variant were taken from people in the Netherlands. The team is testing positive samples from more than 6,700 people in the Netherlands to find out how widespread the new variant is. This process identified 92 more people with the new strain from all regions of the Netherlands, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 109. But the real number is likely higher.
Like COVID-19, HIV mutates very quickly, but most of these changes are not related to the nature of the virus.
By analyzing the genetic variation in the samples, the team calculated that the VB variant first appeared in the late 1980s or 1990s in the Netherlands. They found that it spread faster than other strains in the 2000s and then declined in 2010 in response to more affordable treatments.
It’s not clear how the variant came about, but the team says one possibility could be an unusually long infection in a person who is not being treated to stop the virus from replicating and developing.
Scientists still don’t know how this variant is more contagious and damages the immune system. The researchers note that people infected with this strain have the same characteristics, including age and gender, as other people living with HIV in the Netherlands.
Experts say further study of the mechanisms behind this variant could reveal new parts of HIV that scientists can target with drugs.