HIV drug resistance seen in central China: expert

HIV drug resistance seen in central China: expert
A worker tests blood samples at an AIDS laboratory in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, November 22, 2007. Significant numbers of people living with HIV in central China have developed full-blown AIDS despite receiving free anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, a leading AIDS researcher said on Thursday. (Jianan Yu/Reuters)HONG KONG (Reuters) - Significant numbers of people livingwith HIV in central China have developed full-blown AIDSdespite receiving free anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, a leadingAIDS researcher said on Thursday.
"Recent studies found that a significant portion ofpatients still developed AIDS after two years of treatment dueto the problem of drug resistance," said Chen Zhiwei, directorof the newly-opened AIDS Institute at the University of HongKong.
Before moving to Hong Kong, Chen was based in the UnitedStates where he collaborated with researchers in China toconduct surveillance on HIV drug resistance. Chen said thepatients were in central China, but he did not specify whichprovinces.
"In the past four years, we have been working on it andtrying to understand how the nation provides free HIV drugs tofarmers and villagers and what actually happened after thoseyears of treatment," Chen told a news conference.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers in the central Chineseprovince of Henan were infected in the 1990s through schemes inwhich people sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run healthclinics, making the province the centre of China's AIDSepidemic.
Antiretroviral drugs help keep the HIV virus in check andcan prevent the progression to full-blown AIDS. But regimenscan be complicated and sufferers can easily develop drugresistance if they miss doses. Those who develop resistance tofirst-line drugs will have to resort to stronger, moreexpensive treatments.
However, HIV drug resistance is a difficult problem inChina as there are few second-line drugs to choose from due tohigh costs. Chinese pharmaceuticals are also unable to producemany of them due to patent laws.
Activists say those who can afford it, procure drugs fromoverseas, while the rest simply wait to die.
Chen said the new AIDS Institute would work on possibleAIDS vaccines and try to understand and curb the development ofthe disease in Hong Kong and China.
The United Nations AIDS agency slashed its global estimatesthis week of how many people were infected from nearly 40million to 33 million, mainly due to revised figures fromIndia. But UN officials quickly warned that the world risks aresurgence of the AIDS epidemic if countries let their guarddown.
(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)