African monkey meat that could be behind the next HIV

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

Eighty per cent of the meat eaten in Cameroon is killed in the wild and is known as “bushmeat”. The nation’s favoured dishes are gorilla, chimpanzee or monkey because of their succulent and tender flesh. According to one estimate, up to 3,000 gorillas are slaughtered in southern Cameroon every year to supply an illicit but pervasive commercial demand for ape meat .

“Everyone is eating it,” said one game warden. “If they have money they will buy gorilla or chimp to eat.”

Frankie, a poacher in the southern Dja Wildlife reserve who gave a fake name, said he is involved in the trade because he can earn good money from it, charging around £60 per adult gorilla killed. “I have to make a living,” he said. “Women come from the market and order a gorilla or a chimp and I go and kill them.”

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This is a big deal – and not because as, in the words of the article, “Britain is at risk from an outbreak caused by the lethal Ebola or Marburg viruses contained in illegal imports of bush meat from Africa”.

 

Because AFRICA is at risk from such diseases – and the death toll will be much higher here, where the standard of care is so much lower than in Europe.

 

And because we are losing the closest relatives that we as humans have – to human greed for meat.  How despicable, and how sad, is that?

See on www.independent.co.uk

The origin of HIV: still so much garbage out there

While curating Virology News today, I came across another reprocessing of new that I had come across earlier concerning apparent natural protection of some African female sex workers against HIV infection: this was the intriguingly-entitled “African women’s genitals provide clue to HIV prevention“, in what appears to be an online Nigerian newspaper.

This recapitulates, very accurately, the information I reported in Virology News, which was the subject of a news release following the publication in the September 2011 edition of PLoS One of a study entitled “High Level of Soluble HLA-G in the Female Genital Tract of Beninese Commercial Sex Workers Is Associated with HIV-1 Infection”.  The gist of this is that:

“HIV-resistant sex workers in Africa have a weak inflammatory response in their vaginas – a surprise for the researchers, who were expecting the contrary considering the women’s high exposure to the virus.”

This may lend further credence to the observation that progression to AIDS in HIV-infected people is associated with a state of chronic immune activation – and that SIV-infected vervet monkeys do not exhibit such chromic immune activation, and do not progress like humans do.

What is interesting about the Nigerian article, however, is not what it reports – it is the online comments that follow it.  Here is a selection:

“Was HIV realy discovered in Africa ? Forget the western media propaganda . I have believed , for years , that HIV is a laboratory virus designed for genocide in the thick of apartheid inhuman policies in South Africa .”

“Neither did HIV originate  nor was it perculiar to Africa. It was the creation of the Western countries to stsyematically reduce African population. that the subjects of this study were exposed to HIV virus attests to this fact.”

And my personal favourite:

“So you have already swallowed up the white propaganda that the AIDS virus was first discovered in 1981 in a remote area of central Africa in the green monkey!  A fairy tale, which never explains why prior to its first clinical detection among western homosexual men in the late seventies, no case was found in Africans, and no animal or human population died off in Africa, yet the homosexual population of the west was seriously threatened until their protected sex campaign took off.

You must be unaware that about 35 years ago the Soviet KGB told the world the truth about AIDS….

Jakob Segal, a former biology professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. He further suggested that it was through these prisoners, most of who were homosexuals, that the virus was spread to the population at large.”

What is depressing is that there is just one comment saying “…where HIV started is of little significance now. the issue is that our brothers Africans are the ones affected so we must work hard to find the cure and save our brothers.”

What is obvious is that, even in an environment such as one of the most developed nations in Africa, where intelligent science reporting is happening, the public seems to be alarmingly misinformed about the origin of HIV and predisposed to believe racist conspiracy theories that were debunked years ago.

FACT:
HIV did not come from “green monkeys” and was not discovered in 1981: the virus was described in 1983 and 1984, and HIV entered the  human population in central Africa multiple times, from chimpanzees and possibly also from gorillas, almost certainly via bushmeat – and this happened in the 1930s or even earlier.

FACT:
HIV could not possibly have resulted  from the splicing together of Visna virus and HTLV-1, as no HIV sequence bears any strong resemblance to either virus – and especially not to both of them in different parts of their genomes, as they would be expected to if they were artificial recombinants.  Moreover, the first HIV that has been reliably dated comes from a sample taken in the Congo in 1959.

All of these facts can be easily discovered by a trawl of either the scientific literature, or a first-level digest of that literature by reputable journalists.  All else is fiction…and malicious fiction at that, whether or not such supposed luminaries as Thabo Mbeki believe it.

When dinner could kill you: smoked chimpanzee, anyone?

ProMED Mail this morning had a rather alarming item: “BUSHMEAT TRADE, DISEASE TRANSMISSION RISK”.  They reported on a study, highlighted in a BBC report, of possible pathogens imported into the USA via bushmeat from Africa, confiscated at airports.  This in turn derived from a PLoS One paper – “Zoonotic Viruses Associated with Illegally Imported Wildlife Products“, by Kristine Smith et al., published on January 10th 2012.  Their abstract:

The global trade in wildlife has historically contributed to the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. The United States is the world’s largest importer of wildlife and wildlife products, yet minimal pathogen surveillance has precluded assessment of the health risks posed by this practice. This report details the findings of a pilot project to establish surveillance methodology for zoonotic agents in confiscated wildlife products. Initial findings from samples collected at several international airports identified parts originating from nonhuman primate (NHP) and rodent species, including baboon, chimpanzee, mangabey, guenon, green monkey, cane rat and rat. Pathogen screening identified retroviruses (simian foamy virus) and/or herpesviruses (cytomegalovirus and lymphocryptovirus) in the NHP samples. These results are the first demonstration that illegal bushmeat importation into the United States could act as a conduit for pathogen spread, and suggest that implementation of disease surveillance of the wildlife trade will help facilitate prevention of disease emergence.

What was even more horrifying were the pictures of confiscated items – herewith their Figure 1.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029505.g001

It boggles my mind how anyone could even consider smuggling this sort of thing into anywhere – and I am hoping that the US Customs has the same sorts of detection mechanism – as in, well-trained beagles – as they used to have in Miami Airport to detect biltong [dried spiced meat] smuggled in from South Africa.  Those dogs were seriously good – trouble is, they really loved the biltong they got as a reward, too, and it makes my skin crawl rather to imagine a beagle salivating over smoked vervet monkey.

The ProMED post comments further:

No one really knows the scale of the illegal trade in wildlife meat, or bushmeat as it is often called, but a 2010 study estimated that 5 tonnes of the material per week was being smuggled in personal baggage through Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France. And in addition to the meat products, there is a big trade in live wild animals. Much of this is perfectly legal and supplies the pet industry. Nonetheless, these animals also require improved pathogen surveillance, say the researchers.

One has only to remember that the monkeypox outbreak in the USA in recent times originated in an African animal imported live – see Viroblogy here – to realise the potential danger posed by international movement of wild-caught animals – or even of laboratory animals, as happened in the Ebola Reston incident.

The list of animals from whom parts were found is also rather disturbing: this included chimpanzee, sooty mangabey, and “green monkey” or vervet.  Virologists will not need reminding, but others may, that HIV-1 originated in chimpanzees and HIV-2 in mangabeys – and that although these viruses were not found this time, the PLoS One paper notes:

“Although we did not find SIV or STLV in the limited number of specimens in this study, these viruses have been found in high prevalences in NHP specimens at bushmeat markets and in hunted NHPs [8], [32], [33]. HIV-1 and HIV-2 emerged as a result of several spillover events of SIV from chimpanzees and mangabeys, respectively, that were likely hunted for bushmeat in central and western Africa [30]. Serosurveillance studies have shown thirty-five different species of African NHPs harbor lentivirus infections, with a prevalence of SIV in up to 35% of free-ranging chimpanzees, and 30–60% of free-ranging sooty mangabeys and green monkeys [30], [31], [33], [34].”

So really, it is just a matter of time before meat that contains SIVs or STLVs gets through into the USA and other world centres – and a whole new wave of zoonotic infection could start.  It really is inexcusable that people living in developed countries should be importing meat derived from endangered species in the first place.  It is made worse that developed countries like the USA find it necessary to import LIVE animals as pets – and while the monkeypox outbreak was caught early, the next one may not be.

So forget the “engineered” H5N1 paranoia, folks – be a LOT more scared of the cute rodent in a cage near you, or what your neighbour may be eating….