- VANCOUVER - A new HIV "superbug"
that cannot be effectively treated with existing AIDS drugs has begun to
infect people in Vancouver, a prominent AIDS researcher said yesterday.
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- Dr. Julio Montaner, chairman of AIDS research at St.
Paul's Hospital and the University of British Columbia, said doctors at
St. Paul's have documented a half-dozen cases in the past year of newly
infected people whose strain of the virus is resistant to all three classes
of anti-HIV drugs.
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- There have been only a handful of reported cases in the
world where a person was newly infected with a type of HIV resistant to
all three drug classes. In most of those cases, it appeared that in becoming
drug-resistant, the virus that causes AIDS had mutated in a way that made
it less effective and less dangerous.
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- Dr. Montaner said yesterday that Vancouver researchers
have treated two patients with multi-drug resistant HIV whose virus actually
spread faster than normal.
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- "In a matter of months, these people have gone from
totally asymptomatic to very low immune systems," he said, adding
both patients are still alive. "This virus is very fit and the potential
is there for the virus to become fitter and more able to hurt people. These
two could be the beginning of something. It may already be happening to
some extent. The potential is there for a multi-drug resistant virus to
evolve and become a superbug."
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- Fears that an "HIV superbug" could power a
new AIDS epidemic have haunted researchers ever since the discovery of
powerful new AIDS drugs in the mid-1990s.
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- In an editorial in today's New England Journal of Medicine,
Dr. Montaner and Dr. John Mellors of the University of Pittsburgh argue
that regulators and pharmaceutical companies need to be more flexible in
allowing experimental drugs to be used on patients with drug-resistant
HIV.
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- http://www.nationalpost.com/news/national/story.html?f=/stories/20010809/640160.
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