For almost 30 years, since the HIV arose, chimpanzees suffered the harassment of medical researchers of the developed world, to be models aiming the production of a vaccine against the virus. Hundreds of chimpanzees died and were terrible tortured in research centers, until it was found out that they are resistant to the HIV and had their own virus – the SIV – that caused contamination, but did not affect them.

Now, probably due to a current mutation, that SIV converted in a scaring enemy for thousand of chimpanzees. A nine-year work at GombeNational Park, in Tanzania, produced by a medical team of AlabamaUniversity and directed by Dr. Betrice Hahn, came to unexpected conclusions: chimpanzees infected with SIV are dying 10 to 16 times quicker than the non-infected.

This discovery also reveals news in the fight against human HIV, according to Dr. Daniel Douek, from United States Infectious Diseases and Allergy National Institute. “Considering the evolutionary and epidemiology point of view, this information can be considered as the missing link in the history of HIV pandemic in the world”. He considers that other monkeys and primates seem to survive to the virus and have been suffering some kind of evolutionary adaptation that created the resistance. The infection of chimpanzees in recent and they have not been able to overcome the lethal strength of the virus.

Dr. Pedro A Ynterian
President, GAP Project International