Woman Infected with HIV-like, Gorilla Virus

According to a number of French researchers, a woman in Cameroon was recently identified to carry a weird strain of an HIV-like virus, which most likely originated in a gorilla. The announcement, made on Sunday, is one of the few to date that hint at the fact that gorilla-bound viruses can circulate in human hosts as well. As for the recently infected woman, the scientists say that she got the pathogen most likely from another human, and not an animal itself. She currently shows no sings of HIV infection or AIDS, and is in stable condition.

“We have identified a new human immunodeficiency virus in a Cameroonian woman. It is closely related to gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus and shows no evidence of recombination with other HIV-1 lineages or with chimpanzee SIV,” Jean-Christophe Plantier, who is a researcher at the Universite de Rouen, in France, explains in a statement, Reuters informs. The disease, they say, was identified in the woman in 2004, shortly after she moved to the French capital of Paris from Cameroon. Until 2006, when a new strain of gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus was discovered, the virus showed no similarities to other existing HIV strains.

Genetic sequencing efforts have revealed that the new virus shows large differences from human immunodeficiency viruses, and therefore cataloging it had proven to be very difficult until a proper reference frame was found. According to experts, the HIV virus that infected 33 million people and killed 25 million most likely came from chimpanzees. Hunters who butchered them came in contact with infected blood, and carried the disease onwards, to contaminate the human population as well. The disease transmitted so well because the genetic materials of humans and chimps are very similar.

“Our findings indicate that gorillas, in addition to chimpanzees, are likely sources of HIV-1. The discovery of this novel HIV-1 lineage highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence of new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa, the origin of all existing HIV-1 groups,” Plantier's team adds in the statement. At this point, there are no known cures of HIV-induced AIDS, but existing drugs can keep the disease in check for several years, before the patient succumbs.