A research group at Abbott Laboratories, a giant of the global medical and pharmaceutical industry, has discovered for the first time in 19 years a new strain of the HIV virus (human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV).
Abbott Laboratories has been looking for new, undiscovered potential strains of HIV for many years to keep the diagnostic tests up to date,”said Mary Rogers, senior author of the article the day before officially announcing the company's scientific discovery.
Rogers says the new strain, called HIV-1 group M subtype L, is extremely rare and can only be detected with Abbott's latest screening system.
Rogers also adds that Abbott Laboratories' test ingredients are currently used to scan more than 60 percent of the world's blood supply, so the test must be guaranteed to detect the virus and "must be correct every time."
In the early days of the discovery of HIV / AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, some blood donors did not know they had HIV, so a huge number of people who needed regular blood transfusions, including those with hemophilia, eventually acquired HIV. and died. However, in the years that followed, Abbott Laboratories' efforts were largely HIV-free and the company struggles to keep it that way.
The study, published today in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, serves as a reminder of the dangerous diversity of the HIV virus, writes Dr. Jonah Sacha, a professor at the Institute for Vaccines and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health and Science University, in a review of the study.
“As we can see, HIV is still continuing and developing. The hallmark of HIV is its diversity. This is what has always won out in all our attempts to create a vaccine. There are over 37 million people living with HIV in the world today. This is the highest figure in history. People think that this is no longer a problem and we are in control. But in reality we do not do this,”Sasha admits.
Thus, according to experts, the danger of the virus remains and if a radically new viral strain is detected, then, firstly, it will be able to avoid detection in the blood supply, and secondly, it will make the existing vaccines ineffective. More and more new viruses have recently been breaking through to the surface and we are completely unprepared to deal with them.
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Editorial comment
As the older generation of our readers remember very well, at the dawn of, so to speak, “perestroika”, the topic of AIDS in the Soviet media was namba van: songs were composed in honor of AIDS and even entire publications were named.
Then they somehow forgot about AIDS, after which the well-known "never happened, and now again!"
Scientific American is the oldest popular science magazine in the United States, it's like Science and Life squared, since it's two hundred years old. Therefore, tomorrow the entire world press will write about AIDS, and hence the question arises: what is it for?
The simplest explanation assumes that Abbott Laboratories decided with their new discovery to improve their old financial affairs: if the company owns 60% of the market for vaccines and test kits for AIDS, now, since a certain strain is discovered, all labs will rush to buy diagnostic antibodies for it. polymer membranes, etc. And they will buy from Abbott Laboratories. It's as simple as that.
However, doubts about the correctness of this interpretation are caused for a very long time, during which no new strains have been discovered - 19 years! During this time, Bill Gates managed to sell Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and even 10 to the whole world. With the same competent approach to marketing, Abbott Laboratories had to discover a new dangerous strain at least every two years. or better like Intel - once every three or four months. But this did not happen.
Consequently, the discovery of a new strain is timed to some kind of impending news related to viruses, bacteria, epidemics and others - in order, so to speak, to create the right scientific background for the discovery. Today, for example, Abbott Laboratories discovered the HIV-1 group M subtype L strain, and tomorrow it turns out that there is also a mutant Ebola that will trigger the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. We do not yet know exactly what will be discovered, but we are following the development of events with interest, for anyone can “open”.