Safe sex practices are necessary between infected sexual partners.

Superinfection is a co-infection which occurs during the course of established disease. The case of a 38-year old male with superinfection was described by Stephanie Jost of the Laboratoire Central de Virologie, University of Geneva.

The patient had been treated for acute retroviral syndrome following multiple unprotected sexual contacts with male partners. He had subsequently been enrolled in a trial and had received HAART for 25 months, at which time he had been vaccinated with Alvac and HAART was stopped.

His viraemia had declined to acceptable levels and had remained low while on HAART. One month after treatment interruption, his viraemia rebounded to 80,000 copies per mL, declined to 20,000c/mL and then rose again to 200,000c/mL, fluctuating between 200,000 and 400,000c/mL for 5 months until HAART was restarted.

The sudden viraemia coincided with a trip to Brazil where he had several unprotected sexual contacts three weeks before the emergence of the viraemia. Investigation revealed that his previous AE subtype had been supplanted by a B subtype which was related to the B strain common in Brazil, and which had not been present in the patient during his previous viraemia.

“Cross-clade protection is not achieved by natural infection - this has implications for vaccine developers,” said Dr Jost. Regarding public health implications, Dr Jost said, ´This report supports the guidelines for safe sex practices between infected sexual partners.”

AIDS 2002 Conference News produced by Health & Development Networks/Key Correspondent Team