New "resistant" HIV strain...Yea!
A hard-to-treat strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been found in gay men in King County, and authorities fear it could spread.
"There may be more cases we don't know about," said Dr. Bob Wood, the agency's HIV/AIDS program director.
"We are still working to learn more about these individuals and the virus they have contracted," said Dorothy F. Teeter, interim director of the department. "We are concerned for these individuals and their partners and are continuing our investigation."The same genetic strain of HIV was found over a 15-month period in all the men, methamphetamine users who each had multiple partners, officials said.
"That's highly unusual," said Dr. Peter Shalit, who treats HIV/AIDS patients. One possibility is that there is a new strain of multi-drug-resistant HIV that is spread more easily than previous drug-resistant strains, "definitely a scary prospect," Shalit said.
Alarming numbers of gay men in New York have also been found to have a multi-drug-resistant type of HIV and multiple, anonymous sexual partners, and a history of methamphetamine use, according to the CDC.
Nationally, 2 percent to 3 percent of the HIV strains that people are infected with may be resistant to two to three classes of drugs, Sullivan said. While at least 100 King County residents die of AIDS annually, there is evidence of declining condom use and other safe-sex practices among gay drug users especially, said Wood.
"There's a lot of complacency," he said. "People need to know that some of these new infections may be impossible to treat." Seattle was among the first metropolitan areas in the country to begin a surveillance program for multi-drug-resistant HIV in 2003.
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"People have so manipulated the concept of freedom, that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they have left."
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