An Irish doctor has found a new strain of the HIV virus, the Irish Times reported on Monday.
Dr Grace McCormack at the National University of Ireland, in Maynooth, about 24 kilometres south of Dublin, made the find while researching the molecular evolution of HIV and in 1980s blood samples from the Karonga region in Malawi, central Africa.
”We have found it in samples from the 1980s but have not seen it in any from the 1990s,” the Irish Times quoted her as saying.
As the strain was almost two decades old, this implied the strain had not survived.
”It might be a strain of the virus that failed. Because of that it may give us nformation on how to defeat the virus. If it has failed, why has it failed?”
McCormack’s findings were submitted to the journal of the International Retrovirology Association, Aids Research and Human Retroviruses and published in the May 2003 edition.
Examinations have since confirmed that the find is a previously unknown strain of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids). – Sapa-DPA