“VB Variant” A Highly Virulent Variant of HIV Has Been Discovered in the Netherlands;- Although the VB variant appears to be more transmissible and harmful, it can still be manipulated effectively and is not widely spread.
A highly virulent form of HIV has been circulating silently in the Netherlands, likely for decades, researchers said in a new research paper this week. Fortunately, the variant still responds to conventional treatments and its prevalence appears to have decreased in recent years. But this discovery may provide a timely lesson about the nature of germs like HIV and how they can evolve over time to become more dangerous.
The researchers, based in the UK and elsewhere, have been working on Project BEEHIVE, a study aimed at finding out why some strains of HIV can cause more damage to a person’s immune system than others when left untreated — and the end result leads to for AIDS. To do this, they studied samples of people infected with HIV across Europe and Uganda, including those collected in previous studies, in the hope of finding common mutations that could make the virus more harmful.
During this research, they found a group of 17 people, mostly from the Netherlands, who all carried the same type of HIV-1, the most common type of HIV. This version of the virus – eventually baptized as the “VB variant” – turned out to be exceptionally virulent. In practical terms, this has meant that people with VB have much higher viral loads than normal, and levels of CD4 cells, the immune cells that HIV primarily infects and kills, also drop very quickly.
“VB Variant” A Highly Virulent Variant of HIV Has Been Discovered in the Netherlands
To confirm their suspicions, the team dug into another database of HIV patients living in the Netherlands. They sure found the variant in more people there, too. Finally, they have identified VB in 109 people so far. These individuals appear to be no different from other HIV-infected residents of the country in age, sex, or other characteristics, further suggesting that the virus itself is responsible for the increased virulence observed in their cases. The team’s findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.
Prior to this study, HIV genes were known to be related to virulence, meaning that the evolution of a new species could alter its effect on health. The discovery of this VB variant demonstrated, providing a rare example of the risks posed by the evolution of viral virulence”.
VB certainly poses an added risk for those unlucky enough to contract it. Because CD4 cells decline so rapidly with this infection, Wyant and his team estimate that it will take less than nine months for someone to develop AIDS (usually, it can take years). It’s also possible that people’s high viral loads make them more contagious to others. Fortunately, however, VB does not appear to behave any differently from other HIV strains once people get ART, which means that treatments can still suppress infection and make people less or even completely unable to pass the virus on to others.
By studying its genetics, the team also found evidence that VB may have first appeared in the 1990s. And while it may have spread more rapidly in the early 2000s, it is likely that its spread has slowed in the past decade. In other words, while VB is an important discovery, it does not appear to be a major threat to public health at the present time.
“VB Variant” A Highly Virulent Variant of HIV Has Been Discovered in the Netherlands
VB may also offer some broader lessons about viral evolution, which are more relevant in our pandemic times. Those who seek to downplay the epidemic often claim, for example, that viruses are inherently harmful and inevitably become milder over time, as it will allow them to infect more people who do not die from them. In fact, the viral evolution process is more complex than that.
The possibility of transmission of germs can be negatively affected by their death, as is the case with Ebola. But viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are so transmissible early to infection that they may not be pressured to change much at all, and even the deadliest version can easily thrive, since it can take weeks for people to die as an infection. As a result of the injury. In fact, we may have seen this happen with the emergence of the delta variant of covid-19, which appears to have caused more serious disease than strains of the past. With HIV, its ability to cause disease and ultimately kill people appears to be linked to the same traits that allow it to transmit more easily. So a more lethal variant might still get a foothold if it was also more transmissible, at least to some point, as it seems that VB and possibly other breeds have done. Other factors outside the germ itself, such as pre-existing immunity against it, also play a role in determining its mildness as a disease.
“VB Variant” A Highly Virulent Variant of HIV Has Been Discovered in the Netherlands
This doesn’t mean that the circulating virus strains can’t get milder either – something we’ve probably seen by now with the Omicron variant of covid-19. It just means that predicting the virulence trajectory of any germ is not easy, including the coronavirus. In an opinion piece discussing the new findings, Joel Werthem, an evolutionary biologist from the University of California, San Diego, makes a similar point.
Werthem warns that “although it is certainly possible that SARS-CoV-2 will progress toward a milder infection, like other ‘common cold’ coronaviruses, this finding is far from a priori estimate.”
As for VB, the researchers say its emergence is not a sign that our current strategy against HIV is not working. Some researchers have argued that treating some infections can actually promote the development of highly virulent types, likely including HIV. But the researchers argue that VB appears to have arisen despite, not because of, these treatments. And since people with VB who receive early treatment are less contagious, it only shows that effective containment of the virus is still the best way to prevent variants like VB from spreading further.
They wrote: “Our discovery of a highly virulent and transmissible viral variant underscores the importance of access to frequent testing for at-risk individuals, and adherence to recommendations for prompt initiation of treatment for everyone living with HIV.”