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Jul 22, 2009 03:19 PM | 6
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Wild chimpanzees can become ill and die from a simian version of the AIDS virus, according to a paper to be published tomorrow in Nature (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group). The findings challenge long-held assumptions that chimps, our close relatives, could carry a simian version of HIV but not get sick from it.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) found its way into people from a similar virus carried by monkeys called SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus). Researchers studying chimpanzee populations in the Gombe National Park—where Jane Goodall worked—have found that some chimps infected with a certain strain of SIV were indeed contracting a simian version of AIDS. Autopsies of some of the dead chimps revealed similar organ degeneration similar to that found in long-term human AIDS patients.
“Our findings allow us to look at HIV from a new angle, comparing and contrasting chimpanzee and human infections,” lead study author Beatrice Hahn from the University of Alabama told The New York Times.
Although the discovery might be bad news for declining chimpanzee populations, it does promise a better understanding for the disease in both humans and chimpanzees.
It “provides a missing link in the history of [the] HIV pandemic,” Daniel Douek of the National Institutes of Health told The Chicago Tribune. “If we identify the evolutionary adaptations, that opens us therapeutic avenues for HIV disease.”
Image courtesy of Doug88888 via Flickr
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AIDS
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6 Comments
Add CommentHow did the chimps get it? and if you were wrong about that are you still sure mosquito's can't pass it along?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as I know the virus is transmitted sexually and through biting (those crazy chimps). Nothing has changed as far as [knowledge of] transmission is concerned; but it is now known that the virus can cause disease.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMosquitoes does not pass Siv nor Hiv. yet. Just remenber that evolutionary path of viruses is not fully understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMosquitoes does not infects with Siv nor Hiv. yet. Just remenber that evolutionary path of viruses is not fully understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishas mosquito population living in close proximity to an AIDS patient been investigated for harboring HIV? It should not be very difficult to carry out such an experiment after getting informed consent from AIDS patients.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the CDC (http://bit.ly/4XFCJ):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe results of experiments and observations of insect biting behavior indicate that when an insect bites a person, it does not inject its own or a previously bitten person's or animal's blood into the next person bitten. Rather, it injects saliva, which acts as a lubricant so the insect can feed efficiently. Diseases such as yellow fever and malaria are transmitted through the saliva of specific species of mosquitoes. However, HIV lives for only a short time inside an insect and, unlike organisms that are transmitted via insect bites, HIV does not reproduce (and does not survive) in insects. Thus, even if the virus enters a mosquito or another insect, the insect does not become infected and cannot transmit HIV to the next human it bites.