Relative similarities. Gombe chimps infected by SIVcpz have a remarkably high death rate and evidence of AIDS-like immune damage.
Credit: Michael Wilson
Posted on 02/15/2009 9:09:33 PM PST by neverdem
Relative similarities. Gombe chimps infected by SIVcpz have a remarkably high death rate and evidence of AIDS-like immune damage.
Credit: Michael Wilson
MONTREAL, CANADA--Researchers have long assumed that SIVcpz, the chimpanzee virus that infected humans and triggered the AIDS epidemic, caused no harm to the apes. But new data presented here today at the 16th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections reveal that wild chimps infected with SIVcpz are more likely to die than uninfected chimps. The animals also show AIDS-like damage to their immune systems. The finding raises the possibility that chimps, too, are suffering from an AIDS epidemic.
More than 40 simian immunodeficiency viruses, or SIVs, infect African primates, yet they rarely cause disease. SIVcpz was discovered in 1989, and it soon became clear that it was closely related to HIV-1 and predated it. Several researchers soon proposed that chimps had long lived with the virus and that their immune systems had evolved to coexist with SIVcpz. But fewer than a dozen SIVcpz-infected chimps were identified until more than a decade later, when researchers led by Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, developed a way to routinely test fecal samples from wild chimps for evidence of the virus. At the conference, Rebecca Rudicell, a graduate student in Hahn's lab, explained that the researchers have now amassed enough data to assess the impact of SIVcpz on wild chimps.
Rudicell, Hahn, and colleagues analyzed more than 1099 fecal samples collected between 2000 and 2008 from chimpanzees living in Gombe Stream National Park, the Tanzanian site that Jane Goodall made famous. From these samples, they found evidence of SIVcpz infection in 18 chimps. The prevalence of SIVcpz has fluctuated in the Gombe communities from a low of 9% to a high of 18%, which mirrors the devastating levels of infections seen in human populations in the hardest hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rudicell said that seven of the 18 infected chimps died during their study, compared with 10 of 76 uninfected animals. When they corrected for age and other variables, the scientists found that the SIVcpz-infected chimps had a 15-fold higher risk of death than did virus-free apes. Studies of lymph nodes from two of the infected chimps that died showed the type of immunologic destruction seen in HIV-infected humans. And these chimps also had low levels of CD4 cells, the lymphocytes that are the main targets of SIVcpz and HIV-1.
Although the researchers do not know that the chimpanzees died of AIDS, the data made a convincing case to primatologists at the meeting. "I think there's AIDS in that group," says virologist Preston Marx of the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana. The finding raises provocative questions about the relationship between HIV-1 and SIVcpz. For instance, why SIVcpz harms chimp immune systems but HIV-1 doesn't is a mystery, especially given the close similarities between humans and chimps. The work might offer clues to vaccine makers, too, about which immune responses to target. Also unknown is whether SIVcpz has contributed to the alarming chimp decline seen in Gombe and elsewhere. "It's interesting and new information," says Marx. "The rate of disease here is surprisingly high."
Condoms for chimpanzees!
Let’s ask the gay mafia.
Waidaminute..I had always heard that the AIDS virus originated in the chimps.
Or am I all screwed up here?
I think it’s the fault of the gay bonobo community.
Maybe our new comparator of medical effectiveness will determins it's not cost effective to immunize monkeys and chimps. Probably my only shot not to get dinged in the wallet over this crisis.
Ancient Virus Gave Wasps Their Sting
micro ping
Many years ago, 60 minutes had a show on Patient Zero, the person who started the AIDS epedemic. He was Gaeton Dugay, a flight attendant for a Canadian airline. He was alleged to have had sex with a monkey and then spread it to San Francisco gay bath houses. And from there it snowballed.
Funny that I’m not that concerned about queers with it, but I am about Chimps...
I remember that show but I think the theory is that the flight attendant had gay sex with an African while in Europe, and that’s what infected him with HIV. The virus might have gotten into the African blood by either sex with the monkey or (more likely) infection after butchering an infected monkey.
But Gaetan was pretty promiscuous, so sex with a monkey I wouldn’t put it past him.
Rumors are also that AIDS spread from Africa to Haiti and then to the US. Gaetan supposedly had sex with several thousand men on multiple continents, and was identified by quite a few of the early AIDS patients in NY. BTW, what happened to the AIDS quilt? Is it being stored in the same warehouse with all the JarJar Binks collectibles that never sold?
“what happened to the AIDS quilt?”
I have wondered that for years.
No wait...don't answer that question. I don't want to know.
“Are wild chimpanzees dying of AIDS”? Only if they live in San Francisco.
What a name!
Ew.
Someone was monkeying around....
At first, I thought you wrote AIDS guilt. Maybe you should start your investigation at Cornell Univ., Ithica, NY.
Kiss-In on Ho Plaza Protests Sexuality Bias of Valentines Day (Cornell, Ithaca)
Maybe the folks protesting heteronormativity and heterosexism know where it is? What fools pay for this idiocy?
Actually, you may not be far off.
Bonobos are nonchalant about who they interact with sexually, and use sex as a means to defuse tension within the group.
The first transfer mostly likely originated from butchering a monkey, after all, blood is far more infectuous than e.g. vaginal fluid. And then it spread through Africa for 50 years or so before the media reported the first cases in the US.
Gaetan was more of a mathematical example that helped understand the rapid spread of HIV / AIDS in the US back then. Him being “patient zero” is a myth, however. By that time African immigrants had already brought HIV to Haiti and there was enough sex tourism to and immigration from Haiti for HIV / AIDS to enter the US at several points.
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