Fast-progressing HIV an 'epidemic' in Cuba, says Belgian study

A strain of HIV that progresses to full-blown Aids within three years if left untreated has become "epidemic" among newly infected patients in Cuba who reported having unprotected sex with multiple partners, a study said.

The strain of human immunodeficiency virus - a combination of three subtypes of the virus - progressed so fast, researchers at Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven said they worrid that patients infected with the mutated virus might not seek antiretroviral therapy until it was too late.

The finding, published in the medical journal EBioMedicine, raises concerns among researchers who worry that mutated HIV viruses are more difficult to diagnose, might become resistant to therapy and could challenge efforts to develop a vaccine.

Hector Bolivar, a physician and infectious disease specialist with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said the HIV research community had long known about the virus' capacity to mutate and create new versions. More than 60 strains of HIV type one now exist.

Anne-Mieke Vandamme, a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, and a team of researchers reported that they travelled to Cuba after clinicians on the island reported an increasing number of HIV infections that rapidly progressed to Aids.

For the study, Vandamme's team recruited patients at the Institute for Tropical Medicine Pedro Kouri in Havana who had tested negative for HIV less than three years before diagnosis and who had not received therapy.