HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

Last month's announcement by New York City health officials that a patient there has a rare strain of HIV-- one that is resistant to multiple drugs and is linked to rapid onset of AIDS-- rang familiar to Dr. Julio Montaner, chairperson of AIDS research at the University of British Columbia. In 2001, Montaner and colleagues announced they had identified a potential HIV "superstrain" in two newly infected patients. As with the New York case, the Vancouver patients quickly progressed to AIDS and were resistant to three AIDS drugs.

View our poll archive

But fears that the Canadian patients were infected with a new and dangerous HIV strain were not borne out. Multidrug resistance is uncommon in Vancouver patients years after Montaner's discovery. Some experts say that experience provides a timely lesson, given the current anxiety over the New York case. New York officials said they had not known of the Vancouver cases.

"There's not a lot we can conclude from these isolated cases," said Montaner, though he added that such cases are concerning enough to inspire caution.

Other researchers questioned why officials focused attention on the patient's rapid progress to AIDS-- a problem that could stem from his genetic susceptibility to the disease.

Dr. Richard Kaslow, a professor of epidemiology at University of Alabama-Birmingham who has studied how genetic factors affect patients' progression to AIDS, was surprised by the announcement. "It would be best to have a complete picture of the host and the viral characteristics before drawing any early conclusions," said Kaslow.

Editor's Note: from the Chicago Tribune