AIDS-Like Virus Found in Chimps

Scientists have found two chimpanzees infected with a virus very similar to the human AIDS virus, providing the most valuable clue yet in the search for the mysterious origin of the deadly disease. French researchers said they detected a virus resembling the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in two wild, baby chimpanzees captured in Gabon, an African nation that straddles the Equator.

Since the AIDS epidemic first surfaced in 1981, scientists have been puzzled by the origin of the deadly AIDS viruses. The new virus may prove to be a “missing link” between AIDS-like primate viruses and those that infect humans, a U.S. researcher said.

The virus found in the Gabon chimps, which researchers suggest naming chimpanzee immunodeficiency virus or CIV, varies too much to simply be considered a strain of HIV-1, Simon Wain-Hobson of the Pasteur Institute and his colleagues reported in the journal Nature.