Study: HIV Becoming Less Deadly, Less Infectious

An anonymous reader writes: A new study (abstract) from Oxford University shows HIV is weakening as it evolves in response to our immune system. When the virus encounters somebody with a particularly strong immune system, it sacrifices efficiency in replication to gradually overcome those defenses. This causes it to take more time for the infection to cause AIDS. Professor Philip Goulder said, "It is quite striking. You can see the ability to replicate is 10% lower in Botswana than South Africa and that's quite exciting. We are observing evolution happening in front of us and it is surprising how quickly the process is happening. The virus is slowing down in its ability to cause disease and that will help contribute to elimination." Goulder added that the average time from infection to the onset of AIDS has increased by 25% over the past 10 years.

Comments

Re:Then again, maybe it _is_ good news.

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

What we'd have then is a situation like SIV in which the virus doesn't cause disease in "natural" host organisms (such as chimpanzees) because the host can control virus replication. These people actually already exist and they're called "elite controllers". They are infected with HIV (for many, many years), but their immune system keeps the virus to almost undetectable levels. For them, HIV is harmless.

I work in immunology and the coevolution of host and virus to the point where it is harmless would be a Good Thing (TM).

disease progression has a genetic component

[madbrain]

I'm somewhat skeptical here. From my very small n=2 study, my husband and myself, infected the same year in 2006 (we both had HIV negative and positive tests that same year) with the same virus, as evidenced by genotype mutations test, I can tell you that my husband progressed from HIV to AIDS in less than a year, and had to go on antiretrovirals right away, whereas I didn't need medication for years and chose to remain without them for 4 years. I was in HIV controller studies. There was no change to my immune system on paper. But I was very tired, and I later chose to go on meds anyway. I had to drop out of the studies for this reason. I don't know what came of them. We are of different ethnicity - I am of caucasian and middle eastern descent; while my husband is asian; so our genetic are probably quite different.

It seems to me that this difference in disease progression between countries may have less to do with the virus itself evolving than it does with people's immune systems and genome evolving and becoming better able to deal with the virus.