【Medical Companion Travel】The Netherlands has discovered a highly destructive new HIV super strain! At present, 109 people have been infected

AIDS is a systemic disease that is extremely contagious and has rapidly become a global public health threat since it was first discovered.

Although the current medical treatment has some control over AIDS, the most worrying problem of HIV mutation has occurred.

Recently, a new paper published in the journal Science showed that a research team led by the Oxford University Big Data Center discovered a new super-mutant HIV strain in the Netherlands, which can be called the VB variant.

According to foreign media reports on February 6, this new super-mutant HIV strain is more virulent and more contagious, and destroys the immune system twice as fast as other virus variants. So far, 109 people have been infected and the majority of the patients are concentrated in the Netherlands.

So, to better understand the extent of the virus's spread in the Netherlands, the researchers tested more than 6,700 positive samples from the Netherlands, of which 92 were carried as the new strain, bringing the total number of cases to 109. Subsequently, the research team also tested HIV samples from the global database, and no cases of infection with the new strain in other regions have been found.

In addition, the results show that the viral load of this new mutant is 3.5 to 5.5 times higher than that of the current strain, meaning that infected people will quickly transmit the virus to others.

In addition, the researchers also said that the new strain damages the patient's immune system and weakens the ability to resist daily infections and diseases compared to previous viruses. After the patient is infected with this new strain, the health status will decline rapidly, but after receiving treatment, the patient's immune system will be restored quickly, and the survival rate is not much different from that of other HIV strains, so early detection and early treatment are crucial.

Second, according to the researchers' analysis, the VB variant first appeared in the Netherlands in the 1990s, and in the early days the VB variant spread much faster than other strains, but after 2010, the rate of transmission decreased due to the improvement of medical standards. At present, it is unclear to researchers on how the VB variant appears, why it spreads more rapidly and how it damages the immune system.

With the continuous progress of medical level, the existing antiretroviral therapy (ART) and existing antiviral therapy drugs, so that the HIV level of infected people can be effectively controlled, coupled with the continuous improvement of national health awareness, regular HIV-related testing, early detection and early treatment, reducing the risk of virus transmission. Nowadays, the functional cure of AIDS and the realization of "self-healing" cases occur from time to time, and it is believed that through the unremitting efforts of medical researchers from all walks of life, the fight against AIDS will soon usher in the dawn of victory.