Highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a person living with advanced HIV

A presentation at this year’s European Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), held online this year, will discuss the growing evidence that the beta variant of SARS-CoV-2 first identified in South Africa causes more serious illness in people living with HIV, and failure to rule out SARS-CoV-2 infection in a patient with advanced HIV creates conditions that may lead to the development of dangerous mutations in SARS-CoV-2.

Controlling HIV with antiretroviral therapy might be the key to preventing such a progression of SARS-CoV-2 in patients with advanced HIV, as the clearance of the virus is compromised if HIV is allowed to replicate for a period of time. long period and causes major damage to the immune system.

“Evolved mutations allow you to escape neutralization, which means that antibodies made as a result of a natural infection or a previous vaccination would work less well to protect you from a new infection,” says the presenter of session, Dr Alex Sigal, Africa Health Research Institute, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany. “SARS-CoV-2 can mutate significantly in a person if the infection persists.”

In his speech, Dr Sigal will present a case study of a patient with advanced HIV who, despite having only mild COVID-19 illness, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 for 216 days. Genomic sequencing revealed changes in the patient’s SARS-CoV-2 viral population over time, involving multiple mutations at key sites, including the spike protein domain that SARS-CoV-2 uses. to enter human cells. The evolved virus has been tested and found to have variant-type properties in terms of the ability to evade antibodies.

“Findings like these underscore the need to ensure that all people living with HIV receive appropriate treatment. Otherwise, it is possible that potentially more potent variants than those currently circulating could emerge from people with severely damaged immune systems, ”he explains.

Provided by the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases