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China Emerge Drug-resistant HIV

Chen Zhiwei, director of the Hong Kong AIDS Institute said that because of the spread of AIDS to high-risk groups, and in the general population was stronger foothold, some areas in China there have been drug-resistant HIV strains.

Chen Zhiwei think the current trend is alarming. He believed Chinese AIDS patients may be in trouble, because mainland China can be a handful of AIDS drugs.

He said all of these drug-resistant mutation in the virus have emerged in China, they appeared in Chinese patients. Main concern is whether the drug-resistant virus will spread.

Chen Zhiwei said if drug-resistant virus spread in China, then we do not have enough drugs to choose from. He also mentioned that researchers have called for China to import more types of AIDS drugs.

In the current more than 20 kinds of AIDS drugs, there is only 7 on China market, which means that once a patient's resistance to certain drugs, their choice on the other greatly restricted.

Although AIDS is not curable, but the mixture of multi-drug treatment can control the virus. However, due to limited knowledge of patients, inadequate medical care, lack of health staff to explain the importance of continued drug use, so Chinese patients in rural areas often do not take pills on time.

Upto October 2007, China discovered a total of 700,000 cases of HIV infection / AIDS cases, an increase of 8%.

Chen Zhiwei and his colleagues in "Nature" magazine published an article in "Nature" last week, introducing specific AIDS infection increased by a large margin in China, women, gay and bisexual men.