HIV immunity may stem from ancient smallpox

Gannett News Service via The Arizona Republic ^ | Feb. 20, 2004 12:00 AM | Randy Dotinga

[AdmSmith]

HIV virus causing AIDS in Africa is very different from the HIV virus in the US.

Well, there are some subtypes with minor differences.

[CobaltBlue]

Does this explain how Santa Claus flies? The reindeer eat amanita muscaria?

[VadeRetro]

Here and there you see the bottleneck pegged as recently as 40K years ago.

[CobaltBlue]

Different enough that a vaccine for one probably won't work on the others.

[VadeRetro]

Because dying of diarrhea and emaciation wasn't so remarkable in the past?

I'm sure that's true, but "pre-1978" takes in a lot of post-Renaissance medicine. The "recent African origin" hypothesis seems a best fit to me.

For that matter, what happened to SARS? Where did it come from? Where did it go?

It's still in the civet cats and those funny Chinese "exotic" meat markets. They found at least one other case in recent months.

[VadeRetro]

Less diverse than chimps.

I may be extrapolating wildly in claiming we're "one of the least diverse animal species" given that so few have been sequenced. Given the recent bottleneck in our history, however, I'd be surprised if we aren't pretty low on the scale.

[AdmSmith]

There are two genetically distinct types of HIV, HIV-1 and HIV-2. The two types are about 15-30% different at the DNA level. Both strains cause AIDS, although HIV-1 appears to be more virulent than HIV-2. There is some evidence that infection with HIV-2 may help protect against subsequent infection with the more virulent HIV-1. Epidemiologically, HIV-1 has spread around the world, while HIV-2 is mostly restricted to western Africa.
http://www.bioquest.org:16080/bedrock/problem_spaces/hiv/background.php

I am not updated on recent progress on vaccines, but some years ago the problem was to find a vaccine that would produce significant numbers of memory T lymphocytes, which are important in killing an infection. I do not think that the efficacy of a future vaccine would be different for the subtypes of HIV-1.

[AdmSmith]

I would add that since HIV-2 may help protect against subsequent infection with the more virulent HIV-1, then ther is a hope for a vaccine.

[muawiyah]

Actually, the reindeer are thought to fly by the USERS.

No one knows if reindeer really fly and the reindeer aren't talking, but all these folks, and their cirtters, are portrayed with red noses!

"Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell Rock, dancing and prancing......" was written by Bobby Helms. He wrote a special arrangement for Johnny Cash. Bobby lived very near Mooresville, Indiana, the veritable "buckle" on the Church of the First Born "belt". These folks carry on the practices and traditions of their primitive Norwegian ancestors, right down to rejecting doctors!

Many conclusions may be drawn.

[CobaltBlue]

HIV-2 has a very different progression than HIV-1 - a prolonged asymptomatic period, and it appears to different receptors. It's widely reported to be "less virulent" - which may indicate that Africans have been exposed to it in the past and "developed immunity" - that is, the non-immune ones died out already. I don't think it conveys immunity to HIV-1.

[CobaltBlue]

Many conclusions may be drawn.

I like that way of putting it. ;^)

[realpatriot71]

IIRC, it also has some ties to the Rh negative blood characteristic.

It's a mutated CD4 receptor - on the T-cells

[muawiyah]

BTW, you want to "draw" some strange conclusions, take a good look at Walt Disney's characters, most particularly the ones in "Fantasia".

He had a Great Grandpa Keppel Disney. Without knowing more than two things, that "Keppel" is a name that does, in fact, appear among the Saami dwarves, and "Keppel" is the name of a mountain in Norway that carries a heavy burden of the Little Red Man (Amanita Muscaria) in season, you could be forgiven if you came up with the thought that Uncle Walt knew some stuff, eh?! (Then, there's amanita muscaria - is this Mini Mouse in a cute red dress filled with white dots just like that mushroom ?

[CobaltBlue]

Speaking of drawing strange conclusions, try this on for size:

HIV-1 is thought to be a zoonosis man got from the chimpanzee(actually chimpanzees get an SIV which is closely related to HIV-1, but not actually HIV-1 while HIV-2 is thought to be a zoonosis man got from the sooty mangabey (again, an SIV which isn't exactly the same as HIV-2). Chimpanzees don't get the SIV which is closely related to HIV-2, while sooty mangabeys don't get the SIV which is closely related to HIV-1.

HIV-2 probably appeared in man circa 1940, HIV-1 probably appeared in man circa 1950-1960.

Why would two such different diseases appear in the same host at about the same time and place?

One hypothesis: dirty needles. But that begs the question of origin. This article hypothesizes that viruses humans infected with SIV recombined into HIV - which would probably mean that the SIV precursors of HIV-1 recombined into HIV-1, while the SIV precursors of HIV-2 recombined into HIV-2 but that still leaves the very strange coincidence.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11405938&dopt=Abstract

And what about the Norwegian sailor infected with HIV-1 prior to 1971?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9468138&dopt=Abstract

[muawiyah]

Whalers?

[AZLiberty]

HIV, mushrooms, plague, dwarfism, hallucinogenics, vaccination, etc.

I nominate this thread as the most Biomedically Diverse Thread (within 50 posts) in all Freeperdom.

[VadeRetro]

Multiple phylogenetic analyses not only authenticate this case as the oldest known HIV-1 infection, but also place its viral sequence near the ancestral node of subtypes B and D in the major group, indicating that these HIV-1 subtypes, and perhaps all major-group viruses, may have evolved from a single introduction into the African population not long before 1959.

If this stuff had been in the human population for as long as you've been saying, we'd have strains out the wazoo and phylogentic analyses wouldn't point to a recent introduction to humans.

[CobaltBlue]

My theory - which is only a WAG - is that some strain of SIV or HIV was pandemic among the ancestors of European humans a very, very long time ago, which explains the 15% heterozygous prevalence of the CCR-5 Delta 32 deletion in Europeans better than smallpox or plague.

[CobaltBlue]

Vikings - so far the highest prevalence of CCR-5 Delta 32 deletion is among Scandinavians - although it would seem that Saami haven't been studied.

[muawiyah]

The Swedes in recent years have been into ignorning the Saami differences ~ that's probably so they can steal their land easier.