Newly Infected Not As Infectious As Previously Thought…

[rawTOP]

A new study re-analyzed old data and debunked the widespread thinking that you're most infectious right after infected yourself…

 

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001803

 

However, the question in my mind is – don't viral loads spike right after infection? Is this saying that higher viral loads don't make you more infectious?

[iman2004]

Looking at the paper and the discussion piece the finding seems to be that variations in the behaviour of partners seems to have a large role in explaining the variability. The viral loads used in the papers are all modelled based on viral growth projections which are likely to be broadly correct but have their own assumptions built into the model. It is suggesting that the infectiousness of people with modelled high viral loads is lower than previously thought but there are a lot of caveats in this' of which the behaviour of the partners in this early stage, is one. I am neither a biologist or a epidemiologist so I may be missing something important in these.

[GermanFucker]

A new study re-analyzed old data and debunked the widespread thinking that you're most infectious right after infected yourself…

 

However, the question in my mind is – don't viral loads spike right after infection? Is this saying that higher viral loads don't make you more infectious?

 

I think you slightly misread the article. It actually still says that "acute infectivity is [...] a few times higher than chronic infectivity", due to viral load. I would not call that "debunking". What it does say is that the effect has been "overestimated" when analysing the AIDS epidemic in Sub Saharan Africa and that the allocation of treatment and prevention funds should be modified accordingly, as to be most cost-effective in combatting the epidemic.

 

I would imagine that if you have X dollars to spend, and 90% of the infections come from newly infected passing on the virus, you spend most of your money on advanced testing methods, as to catch an infection as early as possible. If it's just 30% you probably should allocate more money for treatment and care of those who are already living with HIV, e.g. treatment as prevention. But thats just guessing.

 

To me this sounds like an important question for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. But it doesn't contradict the fact that a viral load plays a role (it spikes after infection, then declines and later rises again sharply as one approaches end-stage AIDS), and that a  fresh HIV infection is more infectious than chronic HIV (of course: leaving out end-stage AIDS). Just maybe not quite as much more as previouly tought.

 

[bearbandit]

Thanks for the graph: I've been looking for a copy of it for a while as illustrates the point well, but the time scale and overall shape of the graph will vary from person to person. For example, I got to about year 9 with nearly four times the number of CD4 cells implied here - this was during the eighties. I have of course "borrowed" the graph...