{"id":23773,"date":"2023-03-22T14:57:48","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T18:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/?page_id=23773"},"modified":"2023-05-10T13:11:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T17:11:46","slug":"hiv-no-longer-slipping-under-the-radar","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/genomics\/our-sectors\/health\/hiv-no-longer-slipping-under-the-radar\/","title":{"rendered":"HIV no longer slipping under the radar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>HIV is resilient, and unfortunately that\u2019s not the best news for patients. Ask any researcher trying to stop the virus dead in its tracks for the past 35 years, and they\u2019ll tell you. HIV is a moving target that\u2019s cunning and forever changing. It is to the body what dust is to a home: difficult to eliminate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HIV\u2019s strength lies in its very high rate of mutation. When the virus infects a cell, it uses it to make many copies of itself. But this cloning process is flawed and genetic mutations are common. While most mutations generate non-functional viruses, some produce a new version of the virus. And the new variant can be resistant to a drug that killed the original virus.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.genomequebec.com\/DATA\/TEXTEDOC\/VIH.jpg\" alt=\"HIV\">Since HIV can make a huge number of copies of itself in a short time \u2013 a single virus can have 10,000 descendants in only 24 hours \u2013 people with the disease will have many variants of the virus all living inside them at the same time. These variants do not respond to the same medications.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs a result of these replication errors, the same patient can have 15 to 20 genetic variants of the disease,\u201d says Dr. Michel Roger, Microbiologist and Infectious Disease Specialist at the Centre hospitalier de l\u2019Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. \u201cThis is why we use a cocktail of drugs to treat it. Triple therapy, for instance, attacks HIV on several fronts simultaneously.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some patients can also experience a sudden increase in their viral load after having had the disease under control. This happens when a treatment-resistant variant has arrived on the scene and taken over.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.genomequebec.com\/DATA\/TEXTEDOC\/Pharmacog%C3%A9n%C3%A9tique-petit.jpg\" alt=\"Pharmacogenetics\">This is where&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.genomequebec.com\/en\/glossary\/#p\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pharmacogenetics<\/a>&nbsp;comes in. A genetic analysis is conducted on blood from a patient in order to identify all the different variants present. \u201cFour of the fifteen or so HIV genes are sequenced, and from there, we predict the resistance using the genetic variations identified,\u201d explains Dr. Roger. The traditional testing methods were not very efficient. \u201cWe could find all the variants that exceeded 20 percent, but if a virus represented only 5 percent of the viral load, it went undetected. The patient\u2019s drug therapy could not be adjusted accordingly,\u201d says Dr. Roger. \u201cBut with the latest generation sequencing methods, we can bring that number down to 1 percent, making it much harder for new viral strains to \u2018slip under the radar.\u2019\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Richard Harrigan at the University of British Columbia is conducting this research. The tests are being carried out here in Montr\u00e9al, among other places.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur tests deal with the tropism of the virus,\u201d says Dr. Roger. \u201cWe know that some viral strains \u2013 not all \u2013 use a certain receptor at the surface of cells to enter them. There are drugs that can attach to these receptors in a way that blocks HIV. Unfortunately these drugs come with quite a few side effects. With specific genetic testing, we can make sure we are dealing with a strain that uses the receptor in this way, then simply not administer that particular drug for nothing.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HIV is resistant, but one day resistance will be futile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HIV is resilient, and unfortunately that\u2019s not the best news for patients. Ask any researcher trying to stop the virus dead in its tracks for the past 35 years, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":23293,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23773","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23775,"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23773\/revisions\/23775"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genomequebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}