Canadian health officials seek info on New York HIV strain

Canada's Public Health Agency is asking U.S. health authorities for the genetic blueprint of the HIV strain resistant to 19 of the 20 available anti-HIV drugs and that may lead to rapid HIV disease progression in the New York City man who carries it, Canadian Press reports. "We're hoping to get more information on the actual genetic sequence of the strain, the parts of the genome that have been sequenced, so we'll be able to look at our Canadian databases to see if there's evidence of this in Canada," Frank Plummer, scientific director of PHAC's national microbiology lab, told the press service. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working to secure permission from New York health authorities before providing the data to the Canadian agency, according to Plummer. The genetic information is expected to be sent to the Canadian researchers late this week or early next week.