A variant of HIV has been found in Cuba, according to recent reports; and the mutation is said to be far more aggressive and rapid spreading than any other documented forms of the life-claiming virus.

AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is a chronic immune system disease that's caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The contagious spread of this disease, typically via sexual contact and other exchanges of bodily fluid, is likely a death sentence. And the African-American population continues to experience the most severe burden of HIV, followed by Latinos, who are also disproportionately affected.

The University of Leuven in Belgium conduct a study, which followed reports of HIV-infected people in the nation of Cuba developing AIDS in under three years, though the disease normally takes 10 years to manifest. Professor Anne-Mieke Vandamme led the study and examined patients at the Institute for Tropical Medicine Pedro Kouri in Havana, Cuba.

While advances in medicine are being formed everyday, and organizations have allotted millions to generate research that will undermine the brutal nature of HIV/AIDS, bad news continues to be on the horizon. The patients infected with the new variant experience rapid production of HIV in their bodies that AIDS develop quickly, and the disease eagerly attacks the immune system.

Typically, if a person contracts multiple strains of HIV, then those strains fuse into a new variant of HIV in the host. In the case of the new Cuban recombinant version of the HIV, the virus shortly anchors to co-receptors CCR5 (proteins on the membranes of cells), and after a few years of normal health, HIV makes the transition to co-receptors CXCR4 after infection. This leads to a swift deterioration of health -- and the onset of AIDS. The recently discovered strain of the HIV virus, CRF19, poses an abrupt threat.

Individuals with the recombinant HIV have an abnormally high dose of the virus and defensive molecules called RANTES, which are the part of the human immune system that binds HIV to CCR5 after infection. The high concentration of RANTES signifies a failure to slow HIV, encouraging the HIV to bypass the CCR5 anchor point, and it continues straight toward CXCR4.

The new HIV subtype CRF19 contains a protease, an enzyme that has a protein that encourages virus replication, and the transition from CCR5 to CXCR4. The progression into AIDS occurs at three times the rate of the most common strains of the virus.

Approximately 35 million people worldwide are living with HIV or AIDS; close to 40 million people have died from AIDS-related complications since the 1980s; Latinos account for 21 percent of all new HIV infections in the United States and 6 independent areas, according to the CDC. Also, 87 percent of Latinos infected with new HIV infections in the U.S. are male. And the estimated rate of new HIV infection among Latinos in the United States in 2010 was more than three times as high as that of whites.

The new strain of the HIV means a smaller frame of time to seek treatment, as CRF19 acts twice as fast as the average strain. As of 2013, some 15,000 people in Cuba were living with HIV, out of a population of 11.3 million.

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