A new development in AIDS research shows that the virus could be weakening. According to the websites of news sources BBC News and Newsday, researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, say that the virus has of late not been showing the same potency that it did in the 1980s.
BBC News reported that the study compared HIV-1 samples from12 different hosts from 1986-89 and 2002-03, and the latter samples were not multiplying as well and were less resistant to drug therapy.
So does this mean an end to the AIDS virus as we know it? Not really, according to Gregg Gonsalves, Director of Treatment and Prevention Advocacy at the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
"HIV may be weakening in comparison to strains of the virus from 20 years ago, but this 'weakening' is in relative terms in ability to grow in test tubes and in the presence of antiretroviral," said Gonsalves. "HIV is certainly not weakening in terms of the ability of these strains to cause death or onset of opportunistic infections associated with HIV disease."
The study does, however, offer hope for a future where people infected with AIDS don't necessarily die of the disease. As a result of the study, researchers are theorizing the possible end of the AIDS virus causing death as early as 50 years from now, according to both BBC News and Newsday.
"Obviously this virus is still causing death, although it may be causing death at a slower rate of progression now," said researcher Dr. Eric Artz, the U.S. collaborator from Cleveland, in one article. "Maybe in another 50 to 60 years we might see this virus not causing death."
"This was a very preliminary study," Artz said in the article. "But we did find a pretty striking observation in that the viruses from the 2000s are much weaker than the viruses from the eighties."
According to Newsday's report of the study, the samples were taken from 12 different people who were of similar genetic make-up, and the study showed that 75 percent of the samples from recent years were weaker.
Artz has also added that the study suggests that the virus's ability to replicate itself has gone down over the past few years and "may have decreased in the human population since the start of the pandemic."
Keith Alcorn, of HIV information charity NAM, told BBC News that the virus loses strength as it spreads from one host to another. "What appears to be happening is that by the time HIV passes from one person to another, it has already toned down some of its most pathogenic effects in response to its host's immune system," he said.
Dr. Marco Vitoria, an HIV expert at the World Health Organization, said on BBC News that most diseases like syphilis, TB, and smallpox over time have all shown the same weakening nature that the study found in AIDS.
"Viruses mutate very quickly, and the different strains compete with each other," Professor Jason Morris of the natural science department of Fordham University at Lincoln Center said. "The ones that spread the best tend to dominate, and that trait can correlate with a more lethal strain or a less lethal strain depending on how the virus is transmitted and other factors."
Gonsalves, however, does not agree with Artz's assessment that this change will happen in a few decades. "It may be the case that the virus may evolve into an equilibrium with its human hosts where it becomes harmless," he said. "But that would probably not happen in our lifetimes. It would probably take centuries, not months, years or decades." n
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