Overall, more people are catching a resistant virus, which has mutated in the face of the drugs used in antiretroviral therapy. Researchers from the University of California at San Diego tested 394 recently infected people who were in Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Montreal, Birmingham, Ala., and Vancouver and found that 8 percent of them had a virus resistant to at least one antiretroviral drug. An additional 4 percent had a virus resistant to two or more drugs. The results of the two studies were released yesterday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Chicago. HIV mutates in response to the defense mounted by the body's immune system, according to the American Medical Association.
Antiretroviral therapies can reduce the virus to nondetectable levels.
Patients who stop taking their drugs, or who only take them once in a while, see a rebound in their amount of virus. Even missing a few doses a month can create drug-resistant strains of the virus. Not wearing a condom is causing the spread of the drug-resistant virus, says Weinstock. Unsafe sex is passing these mutations on either from partners of the infected men or partners of partners. But when you get to sexual issues, and emotion gets involved, and there's the heat of the moment, people do very often take risks we wish they wouldn't take.