BBC News published this video item, entitled “Scientists research link between Covid variants and untreated HIV – BBC News” – below is their description.
South African scientists are researching the hypothesis that new Covid variants could be linked, in some cases though not limited too, people with untreated HIV.
However as research progresses they are concerned about further stigmatising people living with the virus.
“Normally your immune system would kick out a virus pretty quickly, if fully functional,” said Professor Linda-Gayle-Bekker, who heads the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town.
“In someone where immunity is suppressed, then we see virus persisting. And it doesn’t just sit around it replicates. And as it replicates it undergoes potential mutations.”
BBC News YouTube Channel
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In This Story: HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of Lentivirus (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive.
Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype. In most cases, HIV is a sexually transmitted infection and occurs by contact with or transfer of blood, pre-ejaculate, semen, and vaginal fluids. Research has shown (for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples) that HIV is untransmittable through condomless sexual intercourse if the HIV-positive partner has a consistently undetectable viral load.
Non-sexual transmission can occur from an infected mother to her infant during pregnancy, during childbirth by exposure to her blood or vaginal fluid, and through breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells.
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