HIV resistance surging
Studies of gay men in San Francisco suggest that drug-resistant strains of HIV will surge in the next 5 years, according to Sally Blower and colleagues of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Currently, about 15% of new infections with HIV in San Francisco are from resistant strains, in spite of the cocktail of drugs used to treat the disease. Blower and colleagues modelled viral transmission among gay men in the city. The model correctly predicted how drug-resistant HIV has already evolved and spread among gay men in the past 20 years. When used to predict the future, the same model predicted a surge in resistant strains, with 60% of those currently circulating capable of self-sustaining epidemics in which each infected person spreads the resistant strain to more than one new recipient.
Blower expects similar surges in Europe and the rest of the USA, which also have resistant strains circulating. In the developing world, where use of antiretrovirals is expected to increase massively, resistance could also be boosted.
Science 5 February 2010: Vol. 327. no. 5966, pp. 697 – 701 DOI: 10.1126/science.1180556
