AR-News: Bushmeat sparks fears of new AIDS-type virus

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Bushmeat Sparks Fears of New AIDS-Type Virus
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040319/hl_nm/health_bushme
at_dc_1 
Bushmeat Sparks Fears of New AIDS-Type Virus 
Fri Mar 19, 4:56 AM ETAdd Health - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Patricia Reaney 
LONDON (Reuters) - People in central Africa who hunt monkeys and apes for 
food and trade are being infected with animal viruses and researchers fear their 
transmission could spark a future epidemic similar to AIDS (news - web sites). 

AP Photo 


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Scientists who documented the transmission of a monkey virus to humans in 
Africa, called Friday for measures to end the hunting of wild primate populations 
to lessen any potential threat of new diseases in humans. 
"It is in all our interests to put into place economic alternatives to help 
people move away from hunting and eating these animals," said Dr Nathan Wolfe, 
of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. 
"In addition to preserving endangered species, such development efforts will 
reduce the ongoing cross-species transmission of retroviruses and other 
pathogens that could spark future epidemics similar to HIV (news - web sites)," he 
added. 
In a collaborative effort, Wolfe and colleagues from the Cameroon Ministry of 
Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) 
and other institutions traced the transmission of an infection called simian 
foamy virus (SFV). 
Like HIV, which causes AIDS, SFV is a retrovirus that can integrate its 
genetic material into the genome of its human host. 
"We're showing that these retroviruses are regularly crossing into humans," 
Wolfe, who reported the findings in The Lancet medical journal, said in an 
interview. 
"Transmission of retroviruses to humans is not limited to a few isolated 
occurrences which led to HIV. This is a regularly occurring phenomena," he added. 
Scientists know from historical evidence that these types of viruses have the 
potential to cause a pandemic. HIV is thought to have been transmitted in a 
very similar way. 
The scientists found antibodies for SFV in one percent of 1,099 people from 
nine rural villages in Cameroon that they had tested who had been exposed to 
non-human primate blood. 
The villagers were infected with multiple forms of SFV from distinct primate 
species. Infections were from several different areas which suggests the 
cross-species transmission of these viruses is widespread. 
"From our perspective, I think we are talking about the tip of the iceberg," 
Wolfe added. 
New diseases, including AIDS, SARS (news - web sites), Ebola (news - web 
sites) and birdflu, have resulted from infections in animals that have crossed 
into humans. 
But reducing the hunting of primates could prove difficult because bushmeat 
is a multi-million dollar industry and a key source of food and livelihood for 
poor people. 
In a commentary on the research, Dr Martine Peeters, of the Institute for 
Research and Development in Montpellier, France said infections from animals are 
among the most important public health threats facing humanity. 
"The risk of acquiring such infections is expected to be highest in 
individuals who are regularly in contact with primates, by hunting or preparing 
primates for food or by keeping primates as pets," she said. 


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