P ARIS - An international team of AIDS researchers has identified what appears to be a new separate strain HIV-1, AIDS virus, which is sufficiently different from the known strains that can escape the current blood tests. This new strain, isolated from a Cameroonian woman who died of AIDS in 1995, appears to be rare and localized, but experts are urging that tests be modified to pick it up.
The new strain, described in the September issue of Nature Medicine , came to light in a study in Cameroon, led by virologist Simon Francis Hospital Bichat Paris. Testing the blood of an AIDS patient was detected no virus belonging to the two known groups of HIV-1 - called groups ( "outliers") M (the "majority") and O. But a test for a strain of SIV - the simian version of HIV. - isolated earlier from a chimpanzee in neighboring Gabon was positive When the researchers isolated the patient's virus and sequenced its genetic code, they concluded that it a third HIV-1 previously unknown group, which they called the group N.
the new strain, designated YBF30 is genetically closer to chimpanzee SIV that other strains of HIV-1 , suggesting that its evolutionary ancestors could have been transmitted from chimps to humans. the monkeys and other primates are believed to be the source of other HIV strains. Simon Wain-Hobson, an AIDS researcher at the Pasteur Institute paris, warns, however, that because some sequences of chimpanzee SIV are available for comparison, "it is too close to call."
for the moment, does not seem s YBF30 be propagated further: Only three of the 700 blood samples from HIV-1 infected patients living in Cameroon have tested positive for the strain. Wain-Hobson notes, however, that "probably exploded because M group entered urban and got there early. If you introduce viruses N group in New York, you will get an epidemic "For this reason, the authors of the paper recommend that HIV tests be modified to pick up the new strain Said François Simon.". A continuous search for new variants is necessary to ensure the safety of blood donation ... these viruses are waiting, waiting for favorable conditions. "
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