HIV is adapting to its human hosts

A study tracing the evolution of HIV in North America has found the virus is getting better at dodging our immune system. Luckily, it's happening really slowly.

Image: martynowi.cz/Shutterstock

The research, published in PLoS Genetics, suggests that the change is so gradual it's unlikely to impact vaccine and design - at least that's the case in North America.

“Much research has focused on how HIV adapts to antiviral drugs – we wanted to investigate how HIV adapts to us, its human hosts, over time,” said lead author Zabrina Brumme, from Simon Fraser University in Canada, in a press release.

When HIV infects a host, it adapts to their immune response through mutations that can technically be passed on – these are known as immune escape mutations.

If these mutations spread throughout populations, it could be bad news for host immunity and vaccine development, according to Brumme.

“Just like transmitted drug resistance can compromise treatment success, transmitted immune escape mutations could erode our ability to naturally fight HIV.”

Her team characterised HIV sequences from patients dating from 1979 to today, and then reconstructed the "ancestral" HIV sequence from that information to see how much things had changed.

“Overall, our results show that the virus is adapting very slowly in North America,” said Brumme. “In parts of the world harder hit by HIV though, rates of adaptation could be higher.”

Brumme adds: “We already have the tools to curb HIV in the form of treatment—and we continue to advance towards a vaccine and a cure. Together, we can stop HIV/AIDS before the virus subverts host immunity through population-level adaptation.”

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