For the study, Dr. Wolfe and his colleagues examined blood samples from 1,099 individuals from Cameroon who were taking part in an HIV prevention program. All of the study participants reported having some exposure to non-human primate blood, which occurred primarily through hunting and butchering. The blood samples were screened for SFV antibodies, which were detected in 10 of the samples. Individuals were identified as being infected with viruses from three different primate species, which included De Brazza’s guenon, mandrill and gorilla. De Brazza’s and mandrill are also naturally infected with simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV), the same class of viruses from which HIV originated. It is not known if SFV is harmful to humans nor whether it can be transferred from person to person or through blood transfusions. Further research on these questions is ongoing.
“The SFV infections in this study were from several geographically isolated locations. This suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, retroviral zoonosis is widespread and arising from various locations where people are naturally exposed to mandrills, gorillas and other monkeys and apes,” said Donald S. Burke, MD, co-author of the study and a professor of International Health and Epidemiology at the School of Public Health.
“Naturally acquired simian retrovirus infections in central African hunters” (The Lancet, Vol. 363, Pages 932-7, March 20, 2004) was written by Nathan D. Wolfe, William M. Switzer, Jean K. Carr, Vinod B. Bhullar, Vedapuri Shanmugam, Ubald Tamoufe, A. Tassy Prosser, Judith N. Torimiro, Anthony Wright, Eitel Mpoudi-Ngole, Francine E. McCutchan and, Deborah L. Brix, Thomas M. Folks, Donald S. Burke and Walid Heneine.
The research was funded by grants from the U.S. Military HIV Research Program, the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future.