HIV may be evolving to become less aggressive, suggesting that one day it may infect humans without causing AIDS.
Women with HIV in South Africa are more likely to have AIDS than a similar group in Botswana, where the disease arrived a decade earlier. The comparison indicates that HIV eventually evolves into a less virulent form, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"If this process is something we can see continuing as a trend, then the ability of HIV to cause disease will become less and less over time," Philip Goulder, a professor of pediatric immunology at the University of Oxford and the study's lead author, said in an interview.