HIV in China follows drug trafficking routes, researchers say
The Yomiuri Shimbun
TOKYO - (KRT) - The HIV/AIDS epidemic in China appears to be spreading along drug trafficking routes extending from Yunnan Province, a trading center connecting China to Southeast Asia, researchers at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific being held in Kobe on Monday.
By 1989, HIV infections had been discovered among intravenous drug users in western Yunnan Province, and the disease quickly spread to the Xinjiang Uighur and Guang Xizhuan autonomous regions in northwest and southeast China, respectively.
The research team headed by Yutaka Takebe from the institute's AIDS Research Center, investigated the strains of HIV in patients in Yunnan and estimated their relationship with strains in India and other neighboring countries.
The researchers discovered two strains of HIV - one found in Thailand in 1988 and another that was hybrid of strains found in India and Thailand.
They also found two new subtypes, both derived from the Indian-Thai hybrid, in Xinjiang Uighur and Guang Xizhuan regions.
The researchers believe the strains found in China have traveled from one of the world's largest heroin producing regions, the so-called Golden Triangle that covers an extensive area in Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS estimates 840,000 people are infected with HIV in China, and the figure is expected to rise to 10 million in 2010 if left unchecked.
"Yunnan and Myanmar are melting pots for HIV, where various types HIV exist," Takebe said. "Because more new variations of the virus, against which no medication may be effective, could appear, we have to stay alert."
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© 2005, The Yomiuri Shimbun.
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