courtesy: indiatoday.in
If studies result in a strong link between the mutation and spread of COVID-19 virus in HIV patients then it would be a cause of worry for India as it is a home for almost over 1 million people with untreated HIV infections.
The researchers in South Africa had found a potentially dangerous coronavirus mutation in a 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV. She carried the virus for 216 days and during this period she developed over 32 mutations of the virus.
It was reported and published as a preprint in the medical journal medRxiv on Thursday. According to which, the woman was diagnosed with HIV in 2006 and her immune system has weakened ever since. The virus accumulated 13 mutations to the spike protein and 19 other genetic shifts that could change the behaviour of the virus.
Even though it is not clear that this woman had passed on the mutations to others, however researchers said it is probably not a coincidence that most of these new variants have emerged from areas like KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, where more than 1 in 4 adults is HIV positive.
Few evidences suggest that people with HIV infection are more prone to contracting Covid-19 and developing severe medical conditions. Researchers say if more such cases are found, patients with advanced HIV could “become a factory of variants for the whole world”.
Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and author of the study, told LA Times that the immunosuppressed patients could carry Covid-19 virus longer than the others. The woman in the study showed only mild symptoms of Covid-19.
The researcher further called for expanding testing and treatment for those with undetected HIV as it “would reduce mortality and transmission from HIV, and also reduce the chances of generating new Covid variants that could cause other waves of infections.”