科学家发现近20年来首个新的艾滋病毒毒株

Since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was first discovered in the United States nearly four decades ago, several strains have been identified — allowing doctors to better tailor diagnostic testing and drug treatments.

自从近40年前人类免疫缺陷病毒(HIV)在美国首次被发现以来，已经发现了几种毒株，这使得医生能够更好地进行诊断测试和药物治疗。

Now, for the first time in 19 years, a new type of HIV has been named, subtype L of the HIV-1 M Group, thanks to researchers with Abbott Laboratories and the University of Missouri, Kansas City. The newly revealed strain, discussed in Wednesday’s issue of Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, is in the same family of subtypes that caused the devastating global pandemic.

现在，19年来第一次，一种新型HIV被命名为L亚型HIV-1 M组，这要感谢雅培实验室和密苏里大学堪萨斯城分校的研究人员。周三出版的《获得性免疫缺陷综合症杂志》(Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome)上讨论了新发现的病毒株，它与引发全球大流行的病毒株属于同一亚型。

Scientists such as Abbott’s Mary Rodgers say it’s crucial to understand the various strains to ensure tests for the virus are accurate.

像雅培公司的玛丽·罗杰斯这样的科学家说，了解不同的病毒株对确保病毒检测的准确性至关重要。

“It can be a real challenge for diagnostic tests,” Rodgers, a co-author of the report, told CNN. Her laboratory has analyzed more than 60% of the global blood supply. They’re always looking for new HIV types so they can “accurately detect it, no matter where it happens to be in the world.”

该报告的合著者罗杰斯告诉CNN：“对于诊断测试来说，这可能是一个真正的挑战。”。她的实验室分析了全球60%以上的血液供应他们总是在寻找新的艾滋病病毒类型，这样他们就能“准确地检测出它，不管它在世界上的哪个地方”。

But that shouldn’t be concerning to that average patient, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the news outlet.

但这与普通病人无关，国家过敏和传染病研究所所长安东尼·福西博士告诉新闻媒体。

“There’s no reason to panic or even to worry about it a little bit,” said Fauci, who was not involved in the study. “Not a lot of people are infected with this. This is an outlier.”

没有参与这项研究的福奇说：“没有理由恐慌，甚至担心一点。感染这种病毒的人不多。这是一个异常值。”

To be officially declared a subtype, researchers needed at least three proven cases of subtype L. The first two were pinpointed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1983 and 1990. The third suspected case was also drawn from Congo in 2001, but it wasn’t a close enough match to the previous samples to be sure, and thorough genomic testing wasn’t as accessible a decade ago as it is today.

为了正式宣布为一个亚型，研究人员需要至少三个已证实的L亚型病例。前两个病例分别于1983年和1990年在刚果民主共和国发现。第三例疑似病例也是2001年从刚果(金)采集的，但与之前的样本不太吻合，无法确定，而彻底的基因组检测在10年前也不像今天那么容易获得。

Researchers spent years developing new techniques to trace the sample. Rodgers described it as “searching for a needle in a haystack.”

研究人员花了数年时间开发新技术来追踪样本。罗杰斯形容为“大海捞针”。

Doctors don’t yet know how if this strain differs from how others manifest in the body, but are confident that current drug treatments will also be effective on subtype L.

医生还不知道这种毒株与其他毒株在体内的表现有什么不同，但相信目前的药物治疗也会对L亚型有效。

“This discovery reminds us that to end the HIV pandemic, we must continue to out think this continuously changing virus and use the latest advancements in technology and resources to monitor its evolution,” wrote study co-author Dr. Carole McArthur of UMKC in a press release.

“这一发现提醒我们，要结束艾滋病毒的流行，我们必须继续思考这种不断变化的病毒，并利用技术和资源的最新进展来监测它的进化，”该研究的合著者、UMKC的Carole McArthur博士在一份新闻稿中写道。

According to the World Health Organization, around 38 million people worldwide are living with HIV, over two-thirds of which are in Africa. New cases of HIV have fallen more than 37% in almost two decades, but UNAIDS estimates that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), the most advanced stage illness caused by HIV, claimed the lives of some one million in 2018.

根据世界卫生组织的数据，全世界约有3800万人携带艾滋病毒，其中三分之二以上在非洲。近20年来，艾滋病新发病例下降了37%以上，但联合国艾滋病规划署(UNAIDS)估计，2018年，艾滋病(由艾滋病引起的最严重的疾病)夺去了约100万人的生命。