A woman from Cameroon is infected with a strain of HIV that originates in gorillas, French investigators report in a short article published in the online edition of Nature Medicine. They believe that this is a new type of HIV-1, which they have classified as type P. There is no reason to believe that this new type of HIV will not respond to HIV treatment.
HIV has its source in simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), that jumped species between chimpanzees and humans.
SIV is also present in gorillas and it has many of the properties necessary for a cross-species migration to humans.
In 2001, French researchers monitoring the genetic diversity of HIV detected an unusual strain of HIV in a 62-year-old woman from Cameroon. Her HIV viral load had been consistently high since her diagnosis with the virus, but she was in good health with a CD4 cell count of 300 cells/mm3.
Analysis of the woman’s virus showed that it was most closely related to the type of SIV that infects gorillas.
“The human case described here does not seem to be an isolated incident, as before coming to Paris the subject had lived in the semiurban Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and reported no contact with apes or bush meat, and the variant’s high level of replication in vivo and ready isolation in culture indicate that it is adapted to human cells.”
The investigators believe that the strain “could be circulating unnoticed in the Cameroon and elsewhere.”
The investigators do not discuss the clinical significance of their findings. However co-researcher, Dr David Robertson told the BBC, “There's no reason to believe this virus will present any new problems”.
Plantier J-C et al. A new human immunodeficiency virus detected in gorillas. Nature Medicine (advance online publication), 2009.