Washington men get hard-to-treat HIV strain

The Advocate

A hard-to-treat strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been found in four gay men in King County, Washington, and authorities fear it could spread to more. There is no evidence that the troublesome strain of HIV is spreading rapidly, but its appearance underscores the need for renewed emphasis on safe sex practices, officials in the Seattle-King County public health department said Thursday.

"There may be more cases we don't know about," said Dr. Bob Wood, the agency's HIV-AIDS program director. "We are still working to learn more about these individuals and the virus they have contracted," said Dorothy F. Teeter, interim director of the department. "We are concerned for these individuals and their partners and are continuing our investigation."

The same genetic strain of HIV was found over a 15-month period in all four men, methamphetamine users who each had multiple partners, but none is known to have had sex with any of the other three, officials said. "That's highly unusual," said Dr. Peter Shalit, who treats HIV-AIDS patients and directs HIV-AIDS research at Swedish Medical Center.

One possibility is that there is a new strain of multi-drug-resistant HIV that is spread more easily than previous drug-resistant strains, "definitely a scary prospect," Shalit said.

"There's no evidence that this has spread outside of King County," said Dr. Patrick Sullivan, chief of the behavioral and clinical surveillance branch at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the center also hasn't compared this strain with ones outside of King County because the center studies disease from a population, not an individual, perspective, he said Friday in a telephone interview.

One man in New York, diagnosed with HIV in December 2004, was found to have a multi-drug-resistant type of HIV and he too had multiple, anonymous sexual partners, a history of methamphetamine use, and had sex with men, according to the CDC. (...)