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Science

Covid-Infected HIV Patient Developed Mutations, Study Shows (bloomberg.com) 231

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A South African woman suffering from inadequately treated HIV, and who harbored Covid-19 for nine months saw the respiratory virus develop at least 21 mutations while in her body, according to a study. From a report: Once the 22-year-old adhered to the anti-retroviral medication used to treat HIV and her immune system strengthened she was able to overcome the Covid-19 infection within six to nine weeks, the study, led by scientists from Stellenbosch and the University of KwaZulu-Natal showed. The research has not been peer reviewed. The study adds to evidence that Covid-19 may mutate rapidly when harbored by immunosuppressed individuals, such as those not taking medication to treat HIV, and this may lead to the development of new variants. The beta variant, which the patient in the study was infected with, was discovered in South Africa, as was omicron. "This case, like others before, describes a potential pathway for the emergence of novel variants," the scientists said, stressing that it was still a hypothesis. "Our experience reinforces previous reports that effective anti retroviral treatment is the key to controlling such events."
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Covid-Infected HIV Patient Developed Mutations, Study Shows More

Covid-Infected HIV Patient Developed Mutations, Study Shows

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  • The sick factory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kyoko21 ( 198413 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:07PM (#62227329)

    So, if I read this right... due to the patient's weak immune system, the original variant was able to create more mutations with in the sick person's body? So, is it possible that if you are sick, there is more chance of you creating more mutations and possibly spreading those mutations to others?

    Talk about when it rains, it pours, and then floods.... :/

    • Re:The sick factory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:09PM (#62227331)

      That's exactly how that works. The longer a virus is in your body, or in the world, or in a lot of other bodies, the more it mutates. That's what a virus does.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Yes well the question to ask is, does it matter.

        This is the whole argument for vaccine mandates really but ... there are 1) a lot of people, 2) a lot people developing severe enough infections despite being 'fully vaccinated' to have significant respiratory symptoms, which basically means a there is a lot of virus replication occurring in those people.

        So it comes down to this someone needs to show there is really a meaningful change in the over risk before we go taking further actions, I don't care if you a

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by IdanceNmyCar ( 7335658 )

          Lockdowns work. I am in China. Unless you believe they can literally hide every truth, the economic is doing good in light of the pandemic and there aren't that many infected. The greatest hits to economy are related to policy superficial to the epidemic but hey it's China. Again accepting this has to do with accepting that country doesn't have a 10-100x fold advantage over any other in regards to propaganda (as that's what's generally required in both regards for hiding any loses). Note I live in Qinghai a

          • Zero Covid works because the objective is to be as strict as possible to stop spread because the real cost to an economy comes later, such as "long covid", sick leave, and other loss of life. However, it requires such a level of commitment which is beyond the "freedoms" of western society but hey life is full of trade-offs. More so, you cannot really have good statistic of zero covid because most every country has given up on it because again "Freedom".

            I don't know what part of Covid is NEVER GOING AWAY China does not understand but I suspect they will figure it out eventually.

            Even asking people to at-home quarantine after travel is basically met with zero legal repercussions where as China has examples of individuals seeing significant repercussions from breaking these rules. It clearly won't work when the punishment for breaking the rules is minor.

            What changes in year 3, 4, 5, 10... 20 with a zero covid policy? Do the Chinese think it will be gone in year 30, 50...100? Enjoy hiding forever while the rest of the world moves on.

        • https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/... [jhu.edu]

          While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded.

          That's John's Hopkins there - not Joe Rogan btw- The conclusion is lock downs did not really impact mortality much, but cost a lot measured in all kinds of ways. The bar for trampling peoples freedoms in the name of public health needs to be much much much higher, is the real take away from the entire pandemic.

          That's the personal web page of someone at Johns Hopkins, not any kind of peer-reviewed publication from the university. The "Literature Review and Meta-Analysis" was done by a group of three economists, not by anyone with expertise in medicine, infectious diseases, or epidemiology.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/... [jhu.edu]

          ...

          That's John's Hopkins there - not Joe Rogan btw- The conclusion is lock downs did not really impact mortality much, but cost a lot measured in all kinds of ways. The bar for trampling peoples freedoms in the name of public health needs to be much much much higher, is the real take away from the entire pandemic.

          That's the economics department at Johns Hopkins. This is not a study by doctors; it's a study by economists. That's not saying that it is wrong, but you shouldn't assume medical rigor merely because of the Johns Hopkins name.

          With meta-analysis papers, the way that the authors pick which studies to include and exclude can have a huge impact on whether you can trust the resulting meta-analysis. This one excludes a lot of papers, and not just papers based on modeling. They also exclude papers that compare

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        I don't understand it. Number of mutations should be proportional to the number of generations. It shouldn't matter if it stays in the same body or if it swaps bodies. What am I missing ?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Hadlock ( 143607 )

          There's probably 10,000 generations, maybe more, of covid that occur in your body across the span of two weeks. One infected person != one generation.

    • So, if I read this right... due to the patient's weak immune system, the original variant was able to create more mutations with in the sick person's body?

      Mutations happen inside a person so the longer you have it, the more mutations.

      So, is it possible that if you are sick, there is more chance of you creating more mutations and possibly spreading those mutations to others?

      Yes. (obviously...)

    • Exactly. Suppressed Immune system = good place for incubation.

      Buuuut we get "the world's problems aren't our problems" people.

      I wonder if some people, back when "A Christmas Carol" was written got the completely wrong takeaway from it . . . like: "What a delightful romp, it IS truly good to be the king"?

      Just so no one misunderstands - once Covid is under check, we can get to back to business as usual. That means Cholera is public enemy #1 and we should resume trying to wipe it out.

      • Covid won't ever be back under check. It's going to be here like the flu till something worst comes. Note, I am not saying it's as severe as the flu, I am saying people won't do what is required to get it under check and the "providence" of a global economy means we will keep spreading and mutating it till kingdom come. But, as some scientists are saying worst variants will likely come and as few are even saying, the next real pandemic *could* be far worse or at least we will keep rolling the dice till one

    • Generally every time the virus replicates there is a chance for mutation. The longer the infection, the more replications. The more people infected, more replication, the greater chance for mutation.

      • The difference is if it's the same host, the mutations can be somewhat "driven" by other viruses the host has (e.g. the common cold) via horizontal gene transfer, and that such mutations will stack given their advantage within that host.

        On the other hand in a population, this "convergent evolution" could take sometime. The same mutation may occur multiple times before becoming dominate and this dominance of mutations would take sometimes though arguably this makes the mutations more suitable for a populatio

    • Yes. And this is why vaccines help prevent additional major mutations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I think that's poor wording in the summary, and presumably the article.

      First, viruses don't "create" mutations. They suffer them. Most mutations are either harmful or neutral. Very occasionally one is beneficial.

      Second, there's no reason the mutation rate would be higher in someone with some other infection. However, if you've got a normal immune system you're going to be recovered or dead from COVID in a couple weeks. If you've got a weakened immune system from uncontrolled HIV, immunosuppressants, etc., y

  • Immunocompromised, Not just HIV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smap77 ( 1022907 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:39PM (#62227415)
    Just a reminder that "Immunocompromised" encompasses a wide range of ailments, the global prevalence of which is substantial. On the scale of 6-7 million persons in the US. If you're naive enough to be asking the question, "But could this variant generation happen in the US, too?" please be aware that the answer is Yes, and that it already is happening. The odds of a robust variant arising increases with duration of infection. It's better to be infected 0 days. Remember that this isn't peer reviewed, so YMMV on the details that come out in the final publications. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... [ssrn.com] Get Vaccinated, Wear a Mask, Isolate if you're potentially infectious.
    • I was confused by the "masks don't work" mantra. While people may not work in hospitals, certainly people are aware that surgeons wear masks for hours on end during surgery for a reason. Way before CoVID, when I visited a friend who was immune compromised due to cancer, they had us wear masks. They only stopped requiring masks for the visits when it was clear that the cancer was too advanced to treat anymore.

    • I don't quite understand your critique. You seem to agree with the paper's conclusion and yet also criticism them for lacking peer-review. Your major critique seems to be pointing out that immunocompromised individuals includes more than HIV patients. It feels like this should be obvious but perhaps I over-estimated that this site embraced nerdom. But even if we accept this, is there not the question that some immunocompromised individuals are not equal to others? Does not HIV seem like the worst form of be

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by smap77 ( 1022907 )
        Statement: Non peer reviewed publications have not been through the peer review process. Insight: Errors, misstatements, fallacies, missing insights or conclusions, etc may all be present. Peer review isn't a magic wand, but the aim of it is to improve the quality of the publication. Also, sometimes peer review even helps the authors determine that there is in fact wrong science or incorrect conclusions drawn. As for this paper, I can't say: I'm not a peer, and I'm not reviewing it. All those grades of
  • This makes it very clear no exemptions to vaccination should be given to immunocompromised people. If they are given exemptions their bodies can become variant generators.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I'm not sure why you'd give an exemption to an immunocompromised person. They're the ones most likely to personally benefit from the protection. Here they were given first access to the vaccine, along with the very old.

    • This makes it very clear no exemptions to vaccination should be given to immunocompromised people. If they are given exemptions their bodies can become variant generators.

      It's all a game of risk vs potential benefit. The risk from the vaccines to immunocompromised people outweighs the potential benefits of vaccination. Potential benefit versus very real risk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      Sure, but most iimmunocompromised people can actually receive the COVID vaccine entirely safely.

      So yes and no. It is obvious that some immunocompromised people *should* be allowed an exemption, but only if their particular immune condition is such that they could not safely receive the vaccine in the first place.

      There's no reason to conclude that being HIV positive would warrant getting such an exemption.

      But that does not mean there are not other more severe cases of being immunocompromised where re

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Barny ( 103770 )

      As a genuine immunocompromised person, I can tell you that there are absolutely no exemptions being given to us. The opposite is the case. We are encouraged to get 3-4 primary doses of our vaccine of choice and then start with the boosters when we can.

      In my case I have an autoimmune disease that requires me to take an immune inhibitor (azathioprine).

  • Being full of HIV and Covid could lead to the possibility of the HIV Reverse Transcriptase reading the Coronavirus RNA.
    And as HIV has a a high mutation rate due to the RT enzyme not being especially careful about the copy process being correct.

    Seems like a good reason to prevent these things from mixing.

    • HIV Reverse Transcriptase reading the Coronavirus RNA

      Can you expand on this? You are saying the transcription process of HIV is "leaky" in a sense that it could transcript viruses other than itself and likely mutate them? This is supremely interesting despite the brevity of your original comment and in turn would likely say the matter is far more complex than merely being immunocompromised? As such I am supremely interested in learning more about what you refer to.

    • No, that is near zero probability if not impossible unless the situation is highly contrived. There is no reasonably probable way the mutations were due to the RT being involved. If the RT copies the covid mRNA into DNA .. it would have to be integrated into the genome and read back out .. that is not very feasible. RT doesn't go around copying RNA into DNA randomly .. if it did .. it has a whole bunch of existing RNA in the cell that it would try doing that with .. and there is zero evidence of RTs doing t

  • This is another illustration of why this has become so politically fraught: a problem which will persist for everyone as long as it persists for any noticeably large group of people is as disturbing to those insisting on a purely individualistic society as are fossils to a 'Young-Earth' Creationist. \ Historically, when a problem people have is insoluble within the confines of an ideology, those who subscribe to the ideology will tend to insist that there is no problem, or that the people suffering from it
  • >Covid-Infected HIV Patient Developed Mutations

    Prepare yourself, here comes the zombie apocalypse!

    Wait, the summary doesn't match the headline. It's the virus which mutated, not the patient. Never mind. Just the incompetence of the typical /. editor. Wait, there _are_ brain-dead zombies involved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Well, you're not entirely wrong. HIV is a retrovirus, which means it reverse-transcribes it's RNA into DNA, which is then incorporated into the host's DNA. To do that it causes the cell to produce a reverse transcriptase enzyme. COVID 19 doesn't do that, but it HAS been shown to get reverse transcribed if it's in a cell that also has reverse transcriptase floating around.

    • Is this really an English mistake or are you just being an ass? The distinction between host-virus is complex. It read perfectly fine to me though I agree, potentially vague. It doesn't say the mutations are in the host or the virus but the assumption should be the virus as mutations in the host are virtually impossible. English by nature works this way, with more ambiguity than other Germanic languages.

  • That is one mutation per roughly every 2 infection-weeks. That does not sound like a particularly abnormal mutation rate. The discriminator here is duration in one person, not rate. For those who misunderstand and think the named variants represent specific mutations, check out this for a much better picture of COVID mutations: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/op... [nextstrain.org] Variants consist of a few clades, clades consist of thousands of mutations.

  • Not over your head, dummy.

  • In other words she was a human incubator for viruses.

  • The selection pressure was towards weakness, not strength. She was immuno-compromised so the virus was basically having fun mutating to be optimal to that individual's immune-compromised state. Note that the moment she got on medication and her immune system was restored she was able to clear the virus. In other words, the viral mutations were adaptations to her weakened immune state and they couldn't evolve back to surviving in the strong immune state. Not really evidence that this could lead to a potent v

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smap77 ( 1022907 )
      I think your time scales are off. While the rate of SARS-CoV-2 mutation is higher than many of the viruses we are familiar with, it is less than many others that we are also familiar with. Immunocompromised people give a greater/longer opportunity for viruses to mutate the mutations, but don't really reach an "optimal". They just keep mutating in ways that aren't immediately destroyed by the environment or the immune system. The key is how those mutations effect the next person (or mink, or dog, or hams

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