A newly discovered strain of HIV, most likely having moved from a gorilla to a human, will probably be sensitive to existing medications on the market, a senior World Health Organization official said Monday, according to dpa. Speaking with the German Press Agency dpa, Teguest Guerma, the acting director of the health agency's HIV/AIDS Department, said the WHO was "closely monitoring" the developments but as yet was not planning to issue any new treatment guidelines. "There is no reason why it won't be sensitive to retro-viral treatment," she said about the new strain, adding though that it was "too early" to draw any conclusions. Scientists have held a strong belief that HIV 1 - the most widespread form of the virus - moved to humans from chimpanzees, originally in central Africa, sometime in the middle of the previous century. If the recent findings, reported in the magazine Nature Medicine, are correct, it would be the first time researchers have ever recorded gorillas as a source of infection. However, the gorillas themselves might have been infected by chimpanzees, researchers noted. "A new virus is always a public health concern," said Guerma. However, as it was a form of HIV 1, there was little cause for worry that existing methods of intervention would not have a positive impact on a patient. "What we know is that HIV 1 is treated by retro-viral therapy, and we should assume it would work with any HIV 1 virus," the WHO's expert said. Even so, this was a new strain - dubbed by scientists as subtype P - on top of the three already known forms: M, O and N. The new subtype is thought to be linked to a form of the virus discovered recently in wild gorillas. The WHO and other researchers said they now need to know if it was quietly spreading in certain areas of Africa, and stressed the need to vigilantly monitor for new viruses. The patient in whom the strain was found, a 62-year-old Cameroonian woman being treated in France, said she had no contact with jungle animals and had not eaten their meat. She was HIV positive, but the virus had not yet developed into AIDS, the disease that severely weakens the immune system. Some 33 million people around the world are thought to have HIV or AIDS. Since its discovery in the 1980s, the virus has caused the deaths of over 25 million people. Guerma said prevention measures were vital to stemming the spread of the virus, while the search for a treatment and, maybe, a cure, must continue. "We need to emphasize active prevention everywhere, and particularly among young people," she said. "But there is no magic bullet. We need a combination of prevention and intervention."
