A new mutant of HIV has been detected in the Netherlands. It is believed to be a superinfected virus that can make a person ill twice as the current version of HIV does.
The new variant is called the VB variant. 109 cases of this variant are already registered according to Oxford University.
This strain can damage the infected person faster than the current one. This damages the immune system and day-to-day ability to fight with normal microorganisms. It means a quicker chance to be infected by AIDS.
This variant has a viral load of 3.5-5.5 times higher than the current one. It means it has a higher chance to transmit the virus to others.
However, after the early treatment, it has a similar recovery and survival rate to those of the previous one. But experts advise early detection and treatment are crucial.
In Britain, people are advised to have HIV and other sex-related diseases checkups every year. Men sex with men are advised to test every three months. More than 100,000 Britons and 1 million are living with AIDS.
The genetic pattern of the VB variant suggests that it arose in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has been declining since 2010. So experts advised to not panic much more about it.
They found that it used to spread rapidly in the 2000s but after the wide treatment, it started to decline.
There is no evidence of how this variant arose, but one possible guess is that one person may go along with this virus without being treated to stop this virus from further replication and evolution. The experts are still unclear about its reason to have high transmission and damage to the immune system.
But our scientists are trying their best to suppress HIV to transmit as quickly as possible to save millions of lives.
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