The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is responsible for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Present in about 38 million people worldwide according to the World Health Organization (WHO), HIV attacks the immune system, the body’s “defense system” against infections.
If, at present, no treatment can eliminate 100% of HIV, antiretroviral treatments can “block” the multiplication of the virus and thus protect the immune system. These tritherapies or multitherapies also reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
Problem: the Toulouse University Hospital recently detected a first French case of transmission of a strain of HIV resistant to all conventional antiretrovirals. This discovery, published last fall in the scientific journal The Lancet, was reported to Public Health France.
“This is a unique event (…) there is no reason to think that it will spread”
The two patients live in the Occitanie region. The first is 54 years old and was diagnosed with HIV in 1995; the second is a young man of 23 years. The two men do not know each other: there is therefore at least one intermediate link” between them, according to Pr. Pierre Delobel, head of the infectious diseases department of the Toulouse University Hospital and main author of the study. An alert was launched with the laboratories of the region to identify the link (s) ) missing.The two patients are under surveillance.
The health authorities today want to be reassuring: “there is no reason to think that this is the start of a new transmission. This is a one-time event, which we will be watching very carefully, but there is no reason to think it will spread.“reacted Pr. Dabis, director of the National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS), questioned by our colleagues from 20 minutes.
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