Charting HIV's rapidly changing journey in the body
Friday, December 12, 2008 - 05:07
in Health & Medicine
HIV is so deadly largely because it evolves so rapidly. With a single virus as the origin of an infection, most patients will quickly come to harbour thousands of different versions of HIV, all a little bit different and all competing with one another to most efficiently infect that person's cells. Its rapid and unique evolution in every patient is what allows HIV to evade the body's defences and gives the virus great skill at developing resistance to a pantheon of antiviral drugs...