Researchers have identified a patient with a unique variant of HIV that is resistant to multiple classes of antiretroviral drugs and associated with the rapid development of AIDS, reporting their findings in this week’s issue of The Lancet. The patient is a New York man who had unprotected sex with multiple partners and regularly took the illegal stimulant metamfetamine. His infection with HIV resulted in progression to symptomatic AIDS in 4-20 months. Martin Markowitz (Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre, New York, USA) and colleagues analysed the genetic make-up of the patient’s virus and assessed its susceptibility to antiretroviral drugs. Rapid progression to AIDS after infection with HIV-1 has been previously described, as has the transmission of multidrug resistant viruses. However, the unique feature of this report is the combination of these two features-multidrug resistance and rapid clinical course to AIDS.
