New HIV Strain Discovered in Cameroonian Woman

From Al Jazeera:

A new strain of the virus that causes Aids has been discovered in a woman from the West African nation of Cameroon.

The virus strain appears to come from gorillas but researchers said the woman has likely been infected by another human, not an animal.

"We have identified a new human immunodeficiency virus in a Cameroonian woman", Jean-Christophe Plantier of the Universite de Rouen in France wrote together with his colleagues in the journal Nature Medicine on Sunday.

"It is closely related to gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus and shows no evidence of recombination with other HIV-1 lineages…"

The 62-year-old woman had no contact with gorillas but said she had had several sex partners.

She was diagnosed with HIV in 2004, soon after she moved to France from Cameroon.

Routine genetic sequencing of the virus showed it looked like no other sample of HIV virus and it was eventually compared to a gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus which was discovered in 2006.

Read the rest of the article here.

Safe sex needs to be the new Black in the worst way.