Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Wednesday, October 14, 1998
Paul Nowell, Associated Press Writer
The findings challenge the widely held belief that an individual can harbor only one strain of the AIDS virus.
The researchers urged the development of drugs that attack blood- and semen- based viruses separately.
The research involved 11 HIV-infected men in North Carolina and Switzerland. Some of those who were treated prior to the study had AIDS strains that had mutated and developed resistance to antiviral drugs.
In most of the volunteers with these resistant viruses, their sperm and blood were found to contain different viral strains.
Protease inhibitors, a powerful class of AIDS drugs, did not penetrate the male genitals, or did so only with great difficulty. In another patient, resistance to the drug AZT was encountered in the sperm virus, but only later in the blood virus.
The researchers concluded that the male genitals and the bloodstream act as separate "compartments," which have to be dealt with independently when giving AIDS drugs.
"Our observations may have substantial consequences for newly infected individuals and for public health," wrote the researchers, Dr. Pietro Vernazza of St. Gall Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland and Dr. Joseph J. Eron of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The findings were releassed Wednesday and are to be published in the Oct. 22 issue of the journal AIDS.
Dr. Oren Cohen of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the research mostly confirms previous studies that determined the disease can be compartmentalized in the body.
"It also shows there are potential reservoirs of virus that can persist even when they are at undetectable levels," he said. "It's a red flag that we can't become too complacent."
But Cohen expressed concerns about the small number of people studied.
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