New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon
 

WASHINGTON – A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

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Scares the hell out of me whenever I hear/read the two words "new strand".

wow. just another reason that ppl need to wrap it up and get tested annually.

Riiight

Gorilla to human transmission? Or Chimpanzee to Gorilla to human? Dude, stop effing animals people, or eating bush meat.

The logistics of that are just mind numbing....the gorilla or even a chimp could rip off your arms then beat you with them, why would you want to get on that?

co-sign. I made this type of annoucement at my student senate and i thought our advisor was going to have a heart attack.

This is kind of what PJ was "Riiiight"-ing about . . . her implication, shared here, that including this information serves no real purpose but to further racist or prejudiced tendencies.

The strain could have developed in parallel, or we could have the causation chain backwards, or it could be random coincidence - there's a lot of options other than comingling with gorillas.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before Super-AIDS

Don't be a fool. Wrap your tool.

Oh I know that...it just seems odd to bring that into the article to begin with really. I would be more apt to buy into the bush meat thing than people having sex with wild animals. I don't know how it goes about furthering racist or prejudiced tendancies by mentioning it though. If people are actually having sex with the animals, that is just plain bizarre, and if that makes me prejudiced against those into beastiality I can live with that.

I'm more along the random coincidence belief on this one.

the new strain can be treated with the same money that cures the old strain.

or the blood of Earvin Johnson...

it's magic.

So let's assume that it came from an ape (chimpanzee or gorilla) and was transmitted to a human, but this woman is not necessarily patient zero. Someone who was maybe poaching apes or just in their territory could be bitten, became infected, and there we have a new infection. Or some crazy person who deals in exotic animals got bitten. We're primates, apes are primates; and if diseases pass from non primates it is not far fetched that it can pass among an order such as primate with the similarities among apes and humans.

thats how i tried to think of it too, cuz any other implication is really not a good look.

Furthermore she was diagnosed in 2004, but it may be forever unknown when she became infected. If she is living in France she may be a refugee who came through Cameroon, and have been infected through sexual assault or a blood transfusion somewhere else in Africa. Mutations also occur, so there's also that angle. Sure if you're fleeing a horrible situation and you're starving you may eat another primate to stay alive, though there are some taboos about eating monkeys and apes as skinned they do look like people and they are fewer in number than other animals, as well as harder to catch without guns. The transmission from eating meat is plausible, but there are so many other ways as well.

It really gets to me that in 2009 people are still so uneducated about HIV/AIDS both in domestic and foreign affairs.