Woman has new strain of HIV from gorillas

A new strain of HIV that originated in gorillas has been found in a human for the first time. The virus in the victim - a woman from Cameroon - is different from the three known strains and appears to be related to a form of the virus recently found in wild gorillas, researchers reported today in the journal Nature Medicine. The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees. It "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence of new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France. It is most likely to have been caused by gorilla-to-human transmission, the team said. But they said they could not rule out the possibility that the new strain arose in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.

The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, said the researchers. She had lived near Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bushmeat. At the moment, she shows no signs of Aids and is not yet receiving antiviral drug treatment, the researchers said. It is still unclear how widespread this new strain is. The researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus's rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, they reported. Dr David Robertson, from the University of Manchester, who co-wrote the report, said it was the first definitive transfer of HIV seen from a source other than a chimpanzee, and highlighted the need to monitor for the emergence of new strains. "This demonstrates that HIV evolution is an ongoing process, he said on the BBC's World Today programme. "The virus can jump from species to species, from primate to primate, and that includes us; pathogens have been with us for millions of years and routinely switch host species." But Dr Robertson said there was no reason to believe that existing drugs would not work on the new virus. "There's no reason to believe this virus will present any new problems, as it were, that we don't already face."

HIV came from a similar virus in chimpanzees called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). Although HIV/Aids was first recognised by scientists in the 1980s. It is thought to have first entered the human population in the region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and probably originally jumped into humans after people came into contact with infected bush meat.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children