HIV is evolving rapidly to escape the human immune system, an international study led by Oxford University has shown. The findings, published in Nature, demonstrate the challenge involved in developing a vaccine for HIV that keeps pace with the changing nature of the virus. ‘The extent of the global HIV epidemic gives us a unique opportunity to examine in detail the evolutionary struggle being played out in front of us between an important virus and humans,’ says lead researcher Professor Philip Goulder of the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research at Oxford University. ‘Even in the short time that HIV has been in the human population, it is doing an effective job of evading our best efforts at natural immune control of the virus. This is high-speed evolution that we’re seeing in the space of just a couple of decades.’ The study better describes HIV’s ability to adapt by spelling out at least 14 different ‘escape mutations’ that help keep the virus alive after it interacts genetically with immunity molecules that normally attack HIV. ‘Key genetic regions of HIV introduced into individuals of different ancestry in different places have been evolving to a greater or lesser […]