AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, March 30, 1998
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor
The virus - which killed the woman it infected - was closely related to the type of simian immunodeficiency virus endemic among chimpanzees (SIV[cpz]). SIV[cpz] does not cause disease in its natural host.
"These data strongly support the hypothesis that HIV in humans arose from a chimpanzee virus," said F. Simon of Bichat Hospital, Paris, France.
Simon presented the findings to the 5th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held February 1-5, 1998, in Chicago, Illinois.
The virus, dubbed YBF30, was isolated from a blood sample obtained in May 1995 from a 40-year-old woman in Cameroon. She died of AIDS in December 1995.
Although the woman's serum tested weakly positive on a third- generation enzyme-linked immunoassay, immunoblot tests showed that serum did not react with peptides from either of the two known groups of HIV: the main group (group M) or the outlying group (group O).
Analysis of the YBF30 genome showed that its gag/pol gene was strongly similar to that of SIV[cpz], while its tat and rev genes were closer to those of group M HIV and its vif, vpr, and nef genes were equidistant from group M HIV and SIV[cpz]. The YBF30 vpu gene was unique and highly divergent.
No evidence of recombination between any known HIV strains could have produced YBF30, Simon said.
Phenotypic assays showed that:
* YBF30 used the CCR5 but not the CXCR4 co-receptor.
* YBF30 did not induce syncytia in cell culture.
* Both nucleoside and non-nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors were active against the virus.
* YBF30 could not infect human CD4(+) T-cell lines, but rapidly adapted to culture in chimpanzee peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).
Simon and colleagues developed a PCR assay specific for YBF30. They used it to test 1200 stored sera collected from HIV infected patients in Cameroon from 1987 to 1997. The sera were 90 percent group M and 8 percent group O.
Three sera - collected in 1992, 1995, and 1997 - reacted with a primer derived from the YBF30 V3 envelope sequence but with no other primers.
Simon noted that the patient had never left Cameroon but that no other data on transmission risk was available other than the fact that butchered chimpanzees are available in the marketplace in Cameroon.
"The public health consequences of the circulation of such viral variants have to be carefully evaluated," Simon concluded.
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