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RIO de JANEIRO, Brazil, July 25-A Connecticut doctor said today that his patient is the source of the highly publicized, rapidly-progressing, multi-drug-resistant HIV strain that aroused considerable concern when a New York man was infected earlier this year. "However," said Gary Blick, M.D., a private practice physician in Norwalk, Conn., "we want to emphasize that our patient is not rapidly progressing. Nor is that patient's life partner, who is also infected with a similarly highly resistant strain, rapidly progressing." The reason the infected New York City man's immune system suddenly deteriorated in a three-month period might have had more to...

March 18, 2005 Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says By MARC SANTORA A genetic study of a rare strain of AIDS that led New York City health officials to issue a public warning last month will be published today, allowing experts from around the world to more accurately evaluate the scientific basis of the alert. The study, appearing in The Lancet, a medical journal, shows the virus to be resistant to nearly all licensed drugs and particularly aggressive. Most of the study's details were disclosed earlier during an AIDS conference in Boston. The report is based on the...

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BOSTON - The New York man who sparked fears of a powerful new strain of HIV had drug-fueled, unprotected sex with more than 100 men in the months before his diagnosis, a top researcher said yesterday. Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan will unveil today a case study of the unidentified man, who his team believes may harbor a mutant strain of the deadly virus. Skeptical AIDS researchers from around the world believe the case is isolated and not the beginning of a new epidemic. In a preview of the study, Ho said the...

BOSTON, Feb. 24 - The researchers whose findings led the New York City health department to warn of a rare and possibly virulent strain of H.I.V. defended on Thursday their decision to notify city officials, saying the virus presented a serious threat to public health. Giving a detailed account of their investigation for the first time at a scientific meeting here, the researchers said their discovery of the potentially more aggressive strain in a New York City man with multiple sexual partners was reason enough to sound the alarm. Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Laboratory...

The manager of Manhunt.net on the HIV “super-strain,” unsafe sex, crystal meth, and corporate—and personal—responsibility. The news that a New Yorker had contracted what appears to be an especially fast-acting, medically impervious form of HIV put the three-year-old gay-personals site Manhunt.net on the front page of the Times, and on the defensive. Along with AOL chat rooms, the popular site was repeatedly cited as a place where men arrange to have sex with other men (although the actual site, or sites, where this man met some of his “hundreds” of unsafe-sex partners while bingeing on crystal meth, has not been...

3-DCR XSD and 3-DCR NYC HIV Very Similar But Distinct February 19, 2005 A strain of HIV with a very similar, although not identical, genetic profile as the one in New York was recently found in the archive of a national AIDS testing lab in California. The strain was originally reported to have come from a patient in San Diego. Yesterday, however, San Diego County's public health officer, Nancy Bowen, said further research showed the patient was not from her area and she did not know where the patient was. New York City health officials have asked the commercial lab...

Is 3-DCR HIV NYC A Recombinant? The test results indicate that the virus uses a receptor that has been linked to accelerated immune destruction and rapid progression to clinical AIDS. Viruses with significant resistance often replicate less well than wild-type viruses. In this case however, the ViroLogic Replication Capacity (RC) assay indicated that virus replication was comparable to most wild-type strains. Replication Capacity is the focus of intensive study at ViroLogic and preliminary data indicate that viruses with high RC values are associated with more rapid immunosuppression. This is an interesting case because it has features that we often see,...

Super-potent HIV strain identified in San Diego man By Sun news services February 16, 2005 An unidentified San Diego resident may be infected with the same rare, aggressive and highly drug-resistant strain of HIV found last week in a New York City man who has rapidly become ill with AIDS, health officials said. The finding was reported in today's San Diego Union-Tribune. "(The local person's) HIV has a similar molecular makeup as the patient in New York City," said Dr. Nancy Bowen, the San Diego County public health officer who held a press conference about the finding Tuesday afternoon in...