A new study in the journal Science shows drug-resistant HIV strains to be a growing problem, arguing that 60 percent of the strains resistant to antiretroviral treatment currently circulating in San Francisco are capable of spawning their own epidemics.

In the United States, the HIV pandemic is fought with drugs, education, testing, and research that are often limited in poorer nations.

But while wealthy countries like the U.S. can deploy a wide arsenal of drugs to battle the spread of HIV, new drug-resistant strains of the disease may be frustrating…

A study by Canadian researchers published in the December 1 edition of the journal Clinical Infection Diseases reports that there has been a significant decrease in the rates of resistance to HIV-1 drugs among patients treated for the disease.

Researchers attribute the drop in drug resistance to the successful use of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), which is considered to be the combination of at least three antiretroviral drugs to maximally suppress HIV infection.

This study is of particular interest because to date there have been few studies evaluating changes…

Around 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year in the United States. However, a specific gene mutation present in about 10 percent of Caucasians may make them resistant to infection by HIV-1, with about one percent having almost full immunity.

Researchers have found resistance and high levels of immunity only against the HIV-1 strain. HIV-1 is the most prevalent type of HIV infection in the Western world. The HIV-2 strain was discovered in 1986 and mostly infects people in West Africa.

The mutation is in the gene for receptor CCR5,…

With the help of antiretroviral medications today, individuals who are HIV-positive have a good prognosis for living many years after being diagnosed. However, one of the most common reasons that treatments fail is due to the development of drug resistance. According to AIDS Community Research Initiative (ACRIA), up to 30 percent of new HIV infections contain strains that are resistant to one or more antiretroviral drugs currently available.

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine states on its Web site that HIV is prone to making mistakes during replication, which are known…