Resistance to HIV drugs 'growing'

HIV strains resistant to drugs are emerging

Strains of HIV which are resistant to drug therapy are becoming more common in the UK, according to research.

A Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) researcher estimates that more than a quarter of those newly-infected with HIV in the year 2000 will have a resistant strain.

This compares to14% of a sample of people infected some time between 1994 and 2000.

Statistical analysis suggests that the risk of being infected with a resistant strain increased year by year throughout the 1990s.

Prevention remains our best weapon against this disease, but the frightening thing is that we are now seeing more new cases than ever before in the UK

Derek Bodell, National Aids Trust

Getting such a strain means that while some anti-HIV drugs will still work, the range with which they can be treated is reduced.

Dr Deenan Pillay, head of the PHLS Antiviral Susceptibility Reference Unit, who worked on the study, said: "We have known for some while that HIV patients who have been treated with anti-HIV drugs may over time develop resistance to some of those drugs.

"However, this research confirms that people may be getting infected with strains which are resistant to some drugs, before they have been treated.

"There can be no doubt that anti-HIV drugs have made a vital contribution to reducing the number of deaths from HIV over recent years, but we must remember that they are only one aspect of tackling HIV.

"They do not cure the disease, and we know that resistance to the drugs is likely to increase."

Not taking the treatment

The reasons for the increase are not entirely clear, although it is thought that failure to keep to regimes of drug treatment can contribute to the emergence of drug-resistant strains.

Dr Pillay said: "This means that it is very important for people to follow the drug regime which they have agreed with the doctors treating them. If people skip doses, for example, this can help resistance to develop."

Derek Bodell, Chief Executive of the National Aids Trust, said: "This new research underlines the fact that we do not yet have a cure for AIDS and that HIV remains a life-threatening disease.

"Prevention remains our best weapon against this disease, but the frightening thing is that we are now seeing more new cases than ever before in the UK, at 3,000 per year.

"We must urgently review the thinking behind existing prevention campaigns targeted to those most at risk to take account of today's generation coming of age in an era of combination therapy, and we ask the government to make this a top priority in its long-awaited HIV and Sexual Health Strategy."

The research was published in the British Medical Journal.