[HN Gopher] Highly virulent HIV variant found to be circulating ...
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Highly virulent HIV variant found to be circulating in Europe for
decades
Author : mudro_zboris
Score : 96 points
Date : 2022-02-04 09:29 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| ck2 wrote:
| Somewhat related I always find the statistic amazing that like
| 90% of people have EBV (mono) and VZW (herpes, chicken pox,
| shingles) dormant just waiting for activation.
|
| Now HIV rising up and of course covid will be with us forever as
| impossible to irradiate once going back and forth between the
| animal/human population.
|
| At some point science is going to have to find a way to hunt down
| viruses in our systems, hiding in immune privileged sites where
| antibodies cannot get to them.
|
| HIV shows how near impossible that task is right now with current
| knowledge/technology.
| ATsch wrote:
| > Now HIV rising up
|
| This is a pretty subtle way of saying you are straight
|
| (the significance of the fact that hiv was perceived to only be
| killing "undesirables" like gays, poors, sex workers, drug
| users on it's spread and lack of containment can not be
| overstated. The illness absolutely devastated those
| communities. When the Bay Area Reporter released an edition
| without obituaries in 1998 it was cause for celebration:
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1998-aug-15-mn-13286...)
| blix wrote:
| I'm not sure hunting down viruses that don't cause problems in
| 90% percent of people is a good idea. Maybe they have some
| positive effect that we haven't realized yet.
|
| We are only just now catching up to the idea that bacteria are
| not always dangerous. There are probably other things we don't
| know. The tonsils and appendix recently were recategorized from
| vestigial organs to immune privileged bacteria resevoirs which
| play significant roles in the immune system.
|
| I think it would be a better idea to try to identify the
| reasons that some people have adverse reactions and some don't
| before going into the body and removing things.
| yaacov wrote:
| It's getting clearer and clearer that these viruses are
| extremely bad, see for example
| https://denovo.substack.com/p/epstein-barr-virus-more-
| maladi...
| blix wrote:
| EBV is linked to many, many things. But why does it only
| have these effects in some people and not others? Why is
| the prevalance of weird EBV-linked conditions increasing
| with time?
|
| Until these question are answered I don't think it's
| possible to call it uniquely bad.
| ck2 wrote:
| EBV is typically activated by other stress. Hence "not a
| problem" for younger, healthier people. Until something
| unpredictable happens, like covid.
|
| One kind of long-covid is activated EBV by covid (there
| are other kinds).
|
| VZV (typo in my earlier post) hides in nerve cells
| waiting for immune weakness to attack (ie. shingles)
| Wildly high number of people have it dormant.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Appendicitis is activated by inflammation and "not a
| problem" for most people. The Appendix organ hides in the
| body and waits to become inflamed to attack.
|
| It's certainly in the realm of possibility EBV or other
| viruses have no benefit, but the history of medicine is
| harmful medical intervention after harmful medical
| intervention...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's almost certain that EBV has no benefit. We have a
| nice control group of people without EBV and as far as
| I'm aware absolutely no benefit is apparent.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| The non-carriers are not a control group unless we are
| 100% sure that the assignment is random. I find it hard
| to believe when the vast majority of population are
| carriers.
| blix wrote:
| As recently as 15 years ago we were 'almost certain' that
| the appendix had no function. Oops.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Now HIV rising up
|
| "for decades"
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > 90% of people
|
| no, that varies by communities of people, defined by a graph of
| their location, hygiene and intimate practices. I can say that
| a different percentage probability applies to the graph of
| Orthodox Hasidim in Brooklyn versus the graph of professional
| basketball players in the USA.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Neonatal HSV1, spread by unsanitary circumcisions, is a known
| problem in Orthodox Jewish communities.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I always thought negatives was people who either haven't had
| sex yet or haven't had sex outside a closed loop.
|
| I'd be interested to see percentage effected normalized by
| number of partners. (Not interested enough to look it up now
| though)
| vsef wrote:
| The viruses listed by parent aren't spread sexually, though
| they are all herpes viruses.
|
| EBV is also known as HSV-4 and gets to 60% plus prevalence
| in children, 90% in US adults. If there are populations
| with especially low prevalence I'm not aware of it.
|
| HSV-1 which causes mouth cold sores is present in 50-80% of
| people, also easily acquired in childhood. Only 20-40% of
| infected people get cold sores so most infected people
| don't realize they have it.
|
| Chicken pox/shingles is also a type of herpes virus with
| well known massive prevalence!
|
| Genital herpes is just one of many types of herpes viruses
| that affect humans.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Oops, I thought the 90% was referring to HPV.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Life and dead happens and whatever we try to fix about it will
| be a pursue of decades/centuries to achive. We're simply more
| aware about our humanity this days and we're more awaken about
| how simple is to suffer a terminal illness just "existing" not
| only smoking, eating fat or living an unhealthy life. I hope
| everyone learns about how life and dead works for the human
| being and not just trying to forget it submerging in an unreal
| dystopy of pills and pilates classes.
| pengaru wrote:
| > smoking, eating fat or living an unhealthy life
|
| Eating fat is not unhealthy.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Life and dead happens
|
| Life is like Schrodinger's cat; you can be alive or dead at
| any moment it's all probability.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Vinnl wrote:
| Just to highlight:
|
| > A highly transmissible and damaging variant of HIV has been
| circulating in the Netherlands for decades
|
| Note the _for decades_. With all the worry about Covid variants,
| these headlines are more attention grabbing, but I 'm not sure if
| this would make the rounds if Covid wasn't a thing.
| sschueller wrote:
| HIV is not transmissible via the air. You don't get infected
| just by visiting a restaurant. You can't even get it by
| touching surfaces or someone who has it. You need to exchange
| blood or have sexual intercourse.
|
| I can choose to not have sex or wear condoms. I can also make
| sure to use clean needles and I know that if I were to get a
| blood transfusion it is checked to be "clean".
|
| I can't choose not to get in contact with COVID if I leave my
| house.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What exactly are you responding to?
| sschueller wrote:
| mmm, reading the parent comment again. I seems to have
| miss-understood it...
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yeah, I was mostly saying that the word "variant"
| probably triggers people to read/share it for reasons
| other than the actual content of the article.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I hope you understand that HIV takes years to decades to
| develop symptoms.
|
| A lot of people could get infected before anybody realises
| there is an epidemic.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I believe seroconversion symptoms happen weeks after
| infection. And testing for HIV is effective at that point.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Most people do not immediately go for comprehensive testing
| the moment they feel worse for a little bit. And most
| doctors that see flu-like symptoms will assume you have a
| flu.
|
| The reality is that almost every person diagnosed with HIV
| is diagnosed because:
|
| 1) They developed full blown AIDS
|
| 2) They got contacted by somebody who just discovered they
| have HIV/AIDS to get checked
|
| 3) They went through some routine unrelated test (for
| example they wanted to give blood)
| dnautics wrote:
| Routine full panel std checks when you have a new partner
| or if you have an accident like say when visiting a sex
| worker are a thing, enough that you can order one at a
| bulk lab diagnostics service for relatively little (it's
| still expensive but not prohibitively so, and some
| nonprofits offer them for free)
| lmilcin wrote:
| People are offered life saving vaccines for free and
| still don't take it.
|
| I don't want to throw completely baseless statistics, but
| I would guess over 95% of the world either a) does not
| have access to that kind of thing, or b) has other
| priorities, financially, or c) does not care about this
| because they are either not informed or they know this
| exists but is not important enough for them to actually
| do it.
|
| And if you are from US remember, western countries where
| these things are easily available and people can
| generally afford it are only small percentage of the
| world's population.
| dnautics wrote:
| Op was about circulation in Europe, where I am guessing
| they have these things.
|
| And if people are not doing it enough in western nations
| where we do have access, then my posting this serves to
| increase awareness in this small hn community.
| codyogden wrote:
| Yes. Seroconversion symptoms are very common and there is a
| queer community term for it: "HIV Flu."
| avianlyric wrote:
| It's particularly interesting because the trend with HIV so
| far has been towards less damaging variants, not more.
| Fatality rates for HIV are almost at point where there's no
| longer _any_ reduction in life expectancy, due to mix of
| better medicine, but _also_ due to HIV evolving into less
| deadly strains.
|
| To see a reversal in this trend is extremely note-worthy, and
| somewhat worrying.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| When making statement like this in a political environment
| like ours you should consider the facts that underpin this.
| With the great majority of people practicing safe sex,
| there's evolutionary pressure on the virus not to kill its
| host before a passionate slipup, which may well be 10 or 20
| years. Also, there's very effective medication available.
| None of these facts is true for covid. There's no pressure
| at all for the virus to become less virulent, it's an
| airborne disease, and what medications are available are
| not particularly effective.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Majority of people who practice safe sex do not affect
| HIV transmission. HIV transmits mostly through networks
| of people who do not practice safe sex.
|
| Unlike a normal virus where people exchange it at random,
| here people that are more likely to get the virus also
| seek out other people that are more likely to get the
| virus. Normal r-value calculations do not apply because
| you no longer have homogenous population.
|
| You do not need a lot of these people to keep the virus
| alive. A person that practices unsafe sex once is more
| likely to do it more than once, with other people who
| will do the same. In effect forming a network within
| general population.
|
| While people who practice safe sex might become
| collateral damage (like spouses of people who practice
| unsafe sex or patients at a clinic that used untested
| blood) they are very unlikely to transmit it further
| (safe sex practices are very effective at preventing
| spread of HIV).
|
| Also no need to bring politics to it. Viruses do not care
| about politics.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _HIV transmits mostly through networks of people who do
| not practice safe sex_
|
| This is correct. Over two thirds of HIV cases around 2009
| were transferred genitally; over 80% if one includes the
| intestinal tract (rectal) [1].
|
| > _Viruses do not care about politics_
|
| But people do, and their behaviour influences how viruses
| like HIV spread.
|
| [1] http://perspectivesinmedicine.cshlp.org/content/2/11/
| a006965...
| mellavora wrote:
| > It's particularly interesting because the trend with HIV
| so far has been towards less damaging variants, not more.
|
| False. HIV is as deadly as ever.
|
| > Fatality rates for HIV are almost at point where there's
| no longer any reduction in life expectancy, due to mix of
| better medicine
|
| True. It is due to improved treatments, which are a mix of
| medicines (where the mix is designed to inhibit the
| development of resistance to the full cocktail)
| enkid wrote:
| Do you have a source about HIV becoming less damaging? I
| haven't heard about that before.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Maybe one or two observations should not make us jump to a
| conclusion of reversal in trend.
|
| Trends don't imply constant variability on each and every
| single observation...
| noname120 wrote:
| Is this strain properly detected by current HIV tests? If
| that's the case then we already have statistics about the HIV
| epidemic. No need for speculations.
| lmilcin wrote:
| A new strain, due to nature of exponential growth, can
| spend a long time before it noticeably moves the total
| number of cases and causes people to notice change.
|
| Think about it this way:
|
| Year 1) 10.000 normal cases + 1 new = total 10.001
|
| Year 2) 10.000 normal cases + 10 new = total 10.010
|
| Year 3) 10.000 normal cases + 100 new = total 10.100
|
| Year 4) 10.000 normal cases + 1.000 new = total 11.000
|
| Year 5) 10.000 normal cases + 10.000 new = total 20.000
|
| Year 6) 10.000 normal cases + 100.000 new = total 110.000
|
| You see how for a long time, if you were looking at a total
| number of cases, nothing was happening and then it suddenly
| became absolute, unmitigated disaster?
|
| This is one of the unfortunate characteristics of
| exponential growth. If there is a new exponential growth
| that is masked by noise -- it could be very invisible for a
| long time and then suddenly become a huge problem.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: here another example with more realistic reproduction
| rate (2x annually and delay of 5 years before developing
| symptoms)
|
| Year 1) 10.000 existing steady state + 100 new = 10.000
| with symptoms
|
| Year 2) 10.000 existing steady state + 200 new = 10.000
| with symptoms
|
| Year 3) 10.000 existing steady state + 400 new = 10.000
| with symptoms
|
| Year 4) 10.000 existing steady state + 800 new = 10.000
| with symptoms
|
| Year 5) 10.000 existing steady state + 1.600 new = 10.000
| with symptoms
|
| Year 6) 10.000 existing steady state + 3.200 new = 10.100
| with symptoms
|
| Year 7) 10.000 existing steady state + 6.400 new = 10.200
| with symptoms
|
| Year 8) 10.000 existing steady state + 13.000 new = 10.400
| with symptoms
|
| Year 9) 10.000 existing steady state + 26.000 new = 10.800
| with symptoms
|
| Year 10) 10.000 existing steady state + 51.000 new = 11.600
| with symptoms
|
| Year 11) 10.000 existing steady state + 102.000 new =
| 13.200 with symptoms
|
| Year 12) 10.000 existing steady state + 204.000 new =
| 16.400 with symptoms
|
| You see, adding a delay to symptoms of exponential growth
| makes it even more heinous.
|
| Year 11 when a somebody that watches statistics of
| symptomatic patients might notice a rise is already when
| you have over 10x more new cases than the steady state you
| think that is happening.
|
| We could complicate this example (some cases get symptoms
| earlier than 5 years, etc.) but the basic reality is still
| the same -- when there is a noise and the signal is
| delayed, the moment you notice a rise in total number of
| cases and you suspect it being caused by an exponential
| growth, you should be worried that the reality is much,
| much, much worse.
| Retric wrote:
| By that same token you can't get 10x growth per year and
| hide for decades. Even doubling every year would be 1M
| million cases in 20 years.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Hope you realise that mine was completely made up example
| just to show the basic characteristic of exponential
| growth in presence of static component.
|
| I chose 10x growth factor to make sure the reader gets a
| point you can have absolutely disastrous epidemic brewing
| and still be invisible for many years.
|
| With smaller reproduction rate and other confounding
| factors detecting a new epidemic like that could be even
| more difficult if you only look at total number of cases.
| Retric wrote:
| Sure, the point still stands.
|
| If it doubles say every 18 months numbers get really
| obvious before the number of cases dwarfs exiting new
| cases let alone existing cases. Something like 3-6 years
| warning before the number of new cases double. T minus 6
| years it's a 6.5% bump, T - 3 years it's a 25% bump, T-18
| months it's a 50% bump.
|
| For a disease like HIV where existing cases dwarf new
| cases you get a lot of time to prepare before the number
| of existing cases significantly increase.
| [deleted]
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| rocketChair wrote:
| How do we know it's been circulating for decades, but only
| discover it just now?
|
| Does anyone know how many billions this new amazing treatment
| will earn Big Pharma?
| NoblePublius wrote:
| How about HIV test passports for going to restaurants?
| jsnodlin wrote:
| Does HIV spread through the air?
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Less than 1.5% of Covid infections contact traced in nyc were
| attributed to bars and restaurants, according to the NYC Dept
| of Health court filings.
| jaycroft wrote:
| Is HIV commonly spread through contact at restaurants? What
| sorts of restaurants are you going to ?!?!
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Covid is not commonly spread in restaurants either. Less than
| 1.5% of Covid infections contact traced in NYC were
| attributed to bars or restaurants, according to the NYC
| Department of Health.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| I don't have sex or shoot up with shared intravenous needles at
| the restaurants I go to.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| You probably have sex with the people you meet at restaurants
| and bars, though.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Off tangent but I'm kinda curious how the Moderna vaccine will
| play out. I don't understand the subject enough so would love to
| hear others thoughts on it. From what I can tell, rather than
| making our immune system respond to the spike protein like the
| Covid vaccines, it tries to make our B cells react to HIV that's
| usually "undetectable" by our immune system.
| lopis wrote:
| I need to research more about the vaccine, but as far as I know
| the issue with HIV is that it not only injects genetic code
| into cells like most viruses, it integrates into the DNA of
| your T-Cells. Even if you eliminate all viruses, your own cells
| will produce more from scratch because they blindly follow the
| blueprint.
|
| So I really want to learn more about how this vaccine works.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Off tangent but I'm kinda curious how the Moderna vaccine
| will play out. I don't understand the subject enough so would
| love to hear others thoughts on it. From what I can tell,
| rather than making our immune system respond to the spike
| protein like the Covid vaccines, it tries to make our B cells
| react to HIV that's usually "undetectable" by our immune
| system.
|
| Are you talking about an unreleased Moderna _HIV_ vaccine? I 'm
| pretty sure you are, but when you say "Moderna vaccine" most
| people will read that as Moderna _COVID_ vaccine, because it 's
| been released and widely administered. It's too easy to read
| your comment as implying the Moderna _COVID_ vaccine has some
| kind of anti-HIV component.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| " The mutated strain's effects are more severe, and it is more
| transmissible -- but drugs are still effective against it."
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| They should really make a vaccine against HIV. Oh wait:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/31/health/moderna-mrna-hiv-v...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| HIV mutates so fast. I wouldn't get my hopes up.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah but, is that because it gets a chance to mutate because
| there's no effective vaccine?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I'd think it'd just mutate into something that the vaccine
| isn't effective for.
| Cerium wrote:
| As I understand the theory here is that humans develop
| antibodies against the parts that mutate making our immune
| system ineffective, while a vaccine could teach the immune
| system a better part to identify against.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Then they should require that that all newborns and their
| parents get it to be able to be seen by a healthcare
| professional. /saracasm
| bluelu wrote:
| Could someone with more knowledge explain to me why a vaccine
| against HIV would not also be a cure?
|
| If the body has antibodies against HIV so you can't get
| infected, it should also be possible to kill HIV as well when
| you are infected? Especially since the vaccine targets a
| structure which the normal immune protection normally doesn't
| target?
| cmckn wrote:
| A vaccine has the potential to give you enough of an immune
| response to prevent an infection. But eradicating an existing
| HIV infection is a very different problem. The virus lies
| dormant in large quantities, and your immune system will only
| attack the virus that's "awake". The current research for a
| cure is focusing on eliminating this viral reservoir. While
| your immune system could theoretically keep the active HIV at
| bay, leading to a functional cure; we've never seen this play
| out (other than in Timothy Ray Brown). HIV always wakes up,
| and replicates faster than your lymphocytes can kill it
| (while using your immune system as a virus factory).
| thanatosmin wrote:
| Protection from infection is sort of like cleaning up a spill
| on your doorstep. Curing an active infection is more like
| cleaning up after someone deliberately blew dirt throughout
| your whole house, and hid some extra in nooks and crannies.
| arbitrage wrote:
| The cure for HIV/AIDS has been one clinical trial away for >>30
| years, now.
|
| Don't believe the hype. Wait for results.
| acdha wrote:
| How many people are effectively managing the disease now who
| would have died 30 years ago? Perhaps you should be less glib
| out of respect for their lives.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're responding to somebody mentioning that a cure has
| been announced as being immanent a dozen times, not
| somebody who is denouncing medicine in general. No need to
| attack unless you actually disagree.
| acdha wrote:
| It's not an attack to remember that medicine is about
| saving lives: changing HIV from a death sentence to a
| daily pill was _huge_ improvement for people and it feels
| quite weird to act as if nothing changed.
| dekhn wrote:
| cure and treatment are two totally different things
| acdha wrote:
| They're different but not completely so: what I'd look at
| is the cost to someone's life. For example, glasses don't
| "cure" bad eyesight but they lower the impact down to the
| point where most people don't care. Type 1 diabetes used
| to be a death sentence, it's still uncurable and while
| it's not fun to have I know plenty of people would have
| died before graduating high school a century ago who are
| living normal lives, raising children, etc.
|
| Similarly, when I was growing up HIV was a death sentence
| and it was tearing through many social groups. The gay
| friends I have, especially the slightly older ones, have
| talked about the trauma that caused because their social
| networks were decimated _and_ a lot of people blamed the
| suffering on them. Now, it's not ideal to be on
| medication but it means that people are reaching close to
| average longevity with far more manageable health impacts
| -- again, not perfect but decades of extra time with
| friends and family is a transformative change.
| tharne wrote:
| > How many people are effectively managing the disease now
| who would have died 30 years ago? Perhaps you should be
| less glib out of respect for their lives.
|
| I don't think the parent commenter was being glib.
| Treatments are great, but a treatment is not the same thing
| as a cure. Lots folks successfully treat their diabetes,
| but I'll bet most of them would prefer a cure for diabetes.
| acdha wrote:
| No question, but that doesn't make science hype just
| because it didn't produce a cure by the end of the
| episode. Just in case it wasn't clear, I'm explicitly
| calling out that choice of wording. If they'd said "this
| is a notoriously hard problem", I'd agree.
| the-dude wrote:
| This is totally uncalled for IMHO.
| acdha wrote:
| What about dismissing decades of hard work by many
| thousands of people as "hype"? There've been a lot of
| disappointments along the way but it's not like these
| were the people pushing Ivermectin as a COVID treatment
| -- a ton of scientific careers have been spent working on
| this and it seems far too glib to brush that away as if
| there isn't a life-changingly better prognosis for
| someone who learned they were infected today compared to
| 30 years ago.
| the-dude wrote:
| _Don 't believe the hype_ is a common expression in
| English. You are just reading much too much into it IMHO.
| And I don't like to see discussions derail into this.
| acdha wrote:
| If you're familiar with the expression, you're also
| familiar with it having a connotation of something being
| oversold, usually for reasons of sales or politics. I
| don't think that's a fair way to describe good faith
| scientific research into a hard problem.
| claytongulick wrote:
| You've had three, (now four) people explicitly mention
| that your comment was needlessly hostile. To each of
| those people, you've responded defensively.
|
| I would suggest that you carefully review what was
| written, what you wrote, what the feedback from it was,
| and consider if there is room for improvement rather than
| just digging in.
| acdha wrote:
| Since your reply was cordial, I'll note that I probably
| would have used wording to make it more clear that I was
| specifically unimpressed by the use of terms like hype or
| what read as the implication that there's been a
| widespread representation that a cure is close. I've
| typically only seen that in the context of the various
| scam claims over the years, not mainstream research --
| the coverage I've read since at least the 90s always
| mentioned it as a very hard target a long time off.
|
| Maybe I'm a bit biased from having worked at some places
| where researchers were working on problems like this but
| it felt unfair to focus on that but not mention that
| there are now mainstream treatments developed as part of
| that work which have made a huge improvement for millions
| of people globally.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| While PEP/PrEP is not a cure for HIV infection it both
| prevents AIDS and suppresses HIV so far that patients are no
| longer infectious. This solution is real, proven and
| available and is applied in practice right now. The only
| practical difference between this and a vaccine is that the
| user has to keep taking medication.
| [deleted]
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