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Irish Scientist Discovers New Strain of AIDS Virus
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DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish scientist has discovered a new strain of the HIV virus (news - web sites) that may provide vital clues in the hunt for a vaccine.


University researcher Grace McCormack came upon the previously unknown virus type while researching blood samples from Malawi, dating back from the early years of the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic in the 1980s.

"It is very interesting because while we have found people infected with it in the 1980s, we haven't found any examples of it in the 1990s yet," said McCormack, a lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.


"As a result, it might be a strain of the virus that has failed. Because of that it may give us information on how to defeat the virus."

There are nine known strains of HIV (news - web sites), the virus that causes AIDS and infects 15,000 people a day worldwide.


AIDS has killed 25 million people around the world and is forecast to kill 80 million by 2010. The only real hope of fighting the disease is a vaccine, but efforts to date have failed although dozens are being tested.


The university publicized McCormack's findings Monday after they were published in AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, the official journal of the International Retrovirology Association.


The hope is that the discovery, the result of three years of research, could help with the prevention and control of the epidemic and even with the development of a vaccine to combat the deadly virus.


"We haven't called it anything yet and we can't name it until we look at the full genome sequence," McCormack said.


"We've applied for funding and we hope to have concluded the research in the next three years, if not sooner."


McCormack's research was carried out with help from the Central Public Health Laboratory and School of Tropical Medicine, both based in London.