"Researchers Trace AIDS Virus to a Subspecies of Chimpanzee"
New York Times (www.nyt.com) (02/01/99) P. A1; Altman,
Lawrence K.
An international team of scientists, led by Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn,
of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, reports that they
have traced the roots of HIV-1 to a subspecies of chimpanzee, Pan
troglodytes troglodytes, in Africa. The researchers, who
announced their finding at the opening of the sixth annual
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in
Chicago, said that the discovery could help lead to HIV control
therapy. The chimpanzee subspecies has been able to survive with
the virus SIV cpz--which is 98 percent similar to HIV-1--without
becoming ill. Researchers may focus on why HIV-1 causes death in
humans, even though SIV cpz does not appear to cause illness in
chimpanzees. The finding may also aid in the future detection of
viruses that could possibly jump from animal to human hosts.
Hahn and colleagues added that chimpanzees are being extensively
hunted; the monkeys are sold in the "bushmeat" trade, which may
be placing people at risk for cross-species transmission. Dr.
Thomas M. Folks, of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, also noted that the number of infected chimpanzees in
captivity is too small to conduct extensive research, and the
animals in the wild are endangered and slowly nearing extinction.
Hahn et al. will publish their findings in this week's issue of
the journal Nature.
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