New HIV strain may be resistant to drugs

The best available antiretroviral drugs, including protease inhibitors, may lose their potency against HIV because new strains of the virus resistant to the strongest drugs have already emerged.

A team of AIDS researchers has reported a case in which a person has become infected with a strain of HIV that is resistant to six of the 11 approved antiretroviral drugs for HIV, including protease inhibitors. Protease inhibitors have been approved for two years; used as part of triple combination therapies, they have contributed to a dramatic decline in death rates from AIDS. Protease inhibitors work by blocking the construction of proteins considered pivotal to replication of …