How did chimpanzees infect humans with HIV considering that they are not the same species?
354616
I hear it was from a bite.
557143
Animals cannot get the same stds that people get.  Human STDs are specific to us - that includes crabs.  Crabs evolved to hold onto human hair - not fur, which has a different structure.  Things like human herpes, HPV, syphillis, etc. also have evolved to affect only human hosts.  \n\nThere are STDs that affect animals though.  They cannot transmit them to us and we cannot transmit our to them.  \n\nEven plants have diseases that are tranmitted through pollenation - which is one form of plant sexuality!\n\nAnimals can transmit Hepatitis A, salmonella and other infectious diseases - but they are not considered stds.\n\nAnimals cannot get HIV because that is HUMAN immunodeficiency virus.  Some animals (like cats, monkeys, apes, and others) do have immunodeficency viruses, but they are not transmittable to us and we can't get theirs.\n\nAlthough some animals share about 90-95% of the same genes as we do - that 10 to 5% is still a huge amount of genes that we don't share.
890802
There is a great article on this...web address is below.  Explains that the HIV virus first developed in monkeys, transferred to chimps, them to men who hunted and ate the chimps.  Read it...very interesting.
919659
AIDS is the disease caused by the HIV virus.\n\nYou can get infected with HIV if the virus passes into your body from someone else who is already infected.\n\nThere are two main ways this can happen:\n\n1. Through having unprotected (no condom) vaginal or anal sex with someone who has HIV. Oral sex carries a small risk of transmission. There has never been a reported case of transmission through kissing (even deep kissing).\n\n2. Through someone else's infected blood getting directly into your bloodstream, for example through sharing drug or tattoo needles or injecting equipment, or piercing with unsterile equipment. In the first half of the 1980s a number of people were infected from contaminated blood transfusions, but this is very rare now because blood donations are screened. Sometimes HIV is passed from an infected mother to her foetus either in the womb or during birth.\n\nYou CANNOT get HIV through normal non sexual contact, or from sharing eating utensils or from mosquitoes.
870150
The HIV virus has been a living virus in the animal kingdom since time in the beginning. Your pet cat has the virus. What happen was this - as this world over populated and people began to starve, corruption in every corner of the globe, people ate parts of the "monkey" , the brains in fact, for the first time, and that is how the virus entered mankind. Now through bi-sexuality - it spread, and you know that you can be in any part of the world in less then 4-hrs - that is how it travelled into our countries. There will never be a cure for it, as man does not have the DNA link to the animal DNA - the only cure is safe sex, and unfortunately that is not working, or sinking into the heads of our young people. 4 young people and hour, under the age of 34 - (14-34) male and female, contract the AIDS virus an hour! in North America!! we are not far behind the 3rd worlds which have millions dying and dead from this uncontrollable disease. A generation of children are now orphans with both parents dead from HIV. Pass it on and only have safe sex. Good question - Check out "Bono's" site, big web and lots of info on this subject and on feed the world.
20015
I can't remember where I saw this, but years ago in graduate school, I'm pretty sure I read that HIV can only survive for 2-6 minutes outside its human host. I don't know abou the one-way blood flow thing with mosquitos. All I know is mosquitos can transmit many other diseases, so it would make sense that they too could transmit HIV, other than HIV can't survive the intermediary.
1067675
"Human immunodeficiency virus (commonly known as HIV, and formerly known as HTLV-III and lymphadenopathy-associated virus) is a retrovirus that primarily infects vital components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. It also directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells. As CD4+ T cells are required for the proper functioning of the immune system, when enough CD4+ T cells have been destroyed by HIV, the immune system functions poorly, leading to the syndrome known as AIDS. HIV also directly attacks organs, such as the kidneys, the heart and the brain leading to acute renal failure, cardiomyopathy, dementia and encephalopathy. Many of the problems faced by people infected with HIV result from failure of the immune system to protect from opportunistic infections and cancers.\n\nHIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid or breast milk. This transmission can come in the form of: penetrative (anal or vaginal) sex; oral sex; blood transfusion; contaminated needles; exchange between mother and infant during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding; or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.\n\nHIV is hypothesized to have originated in southern Cameroon after jumping from wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) to humans during the twentieth century[1][2]. Infection in humans is now pandemic. As of January 2006, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on December 1, 1981, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in recorded history. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4 - 3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children.[3] A third of these deaths are occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth by destroying human capital. Current estimates say that about 28 million people have died and that HIV is set to infect 90 million people in Africa, resulting in a minimum estimate of 18 million orphans in Africa.[4] Antiretroviral treatment reduces both the mortality and the morbidity of HIV infection, but routine access to antiretroviral medication is not available in all countries.[5] HIV/AIDS stigma is more severe than that associated with other life-threatening conditions and extends beyond the disease itself to providers and even volunteers involved with the care of people living with HIV."
1023461
Media releases concerning the possibility of mosquitoes transmitting AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) were common when the disease was first recognized, and the subject is still addressed by tabloids that seek captivating headlines to increase their circulation. The topic was initiated by reports from a small community in southern Florida where preliminary evidence suggested that mosquitoes may have been responsible for the higher on average incidence of AIDS in the local population. The media was quick to publicize claims that mosquitoes were involved in AIDS transmission despite findings of scientific surveys of the National Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that clearly demonstrated that mosquito transmission of AIDS in that community appeared highly unlikely. Nevertheless, media releases perpetuated the concept that mosquitoes transmitted AIDS, and many people still feel that mosquitoes may be responsible for transmission of this infection from one individual to another. \n\n     There are three theoretical mechanisms which would allow blood-sucking insects such as mosquitoes to transmit HIV.\n\n1. In the first mechanism, a mosquito would initiate the cycle by feeding on an HIV positive carrier and ingest virus particles with the blood meal. For the virus to be passed on, it would have to survive inside the mosquito, preferably increase in numbers, and then migrate to the mosquito's salivary glands. The infected mosquito would then seek its second blood meal from an uninfected host and transfer the HIV from its salivary glands during the course of the bite. This is the mechanism used by most mosquito-borne parasites, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and the encephalitis viruses.\n\n2. In the second mechanism, a mosquito would initiate the cycle by beginning to feed on an HIV carrier and be interrupted after it had successfully drawn blood. Instead of resuming the partial blood meal on its original host, the mosquito would select an AIDS-free person to complete the meal. As it penetrated the skin of the new host, the mosquito would transfer virus particles that were adhering to the mouthparts from the previous meal. This mechanism is not common in mosquito-borne infections, but equine infectious anemia is transmitted to horses by biting flies in this manner.\n\n3. The third theoretical mechanism also involves a mosquito that is interrupted while feeding on an HIV carrier and resumes the partial blood meal on a different individual. In this scenario, however, the AIDS-free host squashes the mosquito as it attempts to feed and smears HIV contaminated blood into the wound. In theory, any of the mosquito-borne viruses could be transmitted in this manner providing the host circulated sufficient virus particles to initiate re-infection by contamination.\n\n     Each of these mechanisms has been investigated with a variety of blood sucking insects and the results clearly show that mosquitoes cannot transmit AIDS. News reports on the findings, however, have been confusing, and media interpretation of the results has not been clear. The average person is still not convinced that mosquitoes are not involved in the transmission of a disease that appears in the blood, is passed from person to person and can be contracted by persons that share hypodermic needles. Here are just some of the reasons why the studies showed that mosquitoes cannot transmit AIDS:\n\n \n\n  Mosquitoes Digest the Virus that Causes AIDS\n\n\n    When a mosquito transmits a disease agent from one person to another, the infectious agent must remain alive inside the mosquito until transfer is completed. If the mosquito digests the parasite, the transmission cycle is terminated and the parasite cannot be passed on to the next host. Successful mosquito-borne parasites have a number of interesting ways to avoid being treated as food. Some are refractory to the digestive enzymes inside the mosquito's stomach; most bore their way out of the stom
618375
I thought this was an amazing article. It was just published a few days ago:\n\nWASHINGTON - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases emerged, scientists have confirmed that the HIV virus plaguing humans really did originate in wild chimpanzees, in a corner of Cameroon.\n\nSolving the mystery of HIV’s ancestry was dirty work. Scientists employed trackers to plunge through dense jungle and collect the fresh feces of wild apes — more than 1,300 samples in all.\n\nBefore that, it took seven years of research just to develop the testing methods to genetically trace the primate version of the virus in living wild chimps without hurting the endangered species.\n\nUntil now, “no one was able to look. No one had the tools,” said Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She led the team of international researchers that reported the success in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.\n\n“We’re 25 years into this pandemic,” Hahn said. “We don’t have a cure. We don’t have a vaccine. But we know where it came from. At least we can make a check mark on one of those.”\n\nScientists long have known that nonhuman primates carry their own version of the AIDS virus, called SIV or simian immunodeficiency virus. But with one exception, it had been found only in captive chimpanzees, particularly a subspecies that in the wild populates mostly West Africa.\n\nIt was not known how prevalent the virus was in chimps in the wild, or how genetically or geographically diverse it was, complicating efforts to pin down the jump from animal to man.\n\nHahn’s team tested chimp feces for SIV antibodies, finding them in a subspecies called Pan troglodytes troglodytes in southern Cameroon.\n\nChimps tend to form geographically distinct communities. By genetically analyzing the feces, researchers could trace individual infected chimps. The team found some chimp communities with infection rates as high as 35 percent, while others had no infection at all.\n\nEvery single infected chimp had a common base genetic pattern that indicated a common ancestor, Hahn said.\n\nThere are three types of HIV-1, the strain of the human virus responsible for most of the worldwide epidemic. Genetic analysis let Hahn identify chimp communities near Cameroon’s Sanaga River whose viral strains are most closely related to the most common of those HIV-1 subtypes.\n\n“The genetic similarity was striking,” Hahn said.\n\nThe first human known to be infected with HIV was a man from Kinshasa in the nearby country of Congo who had his blood stored in 1959 as part of a medical study, decades before scientists knew the AIDS virus existed.\n\nPresumably, someone in rural Cameroon was bitten by a chimp or was cut while butchering one and became infected with the ape virus. That person passed it to someone else.\n\nThe Sanaga River long has been a commercial waterway, for transporting hardwood, ivory and other items to more urban areas. Eventually, someone infected made it to Kinshasa.\n\n“How many different transmission events occurred between that initial hunter and this virus making it to Kinshasa, I don’t know. It could have been one, it could have been 10, it could have been 100,” Hahn said. “Eventually, it ended up in an urban area, and that’s where it really got going.”\n\nSomewhere in all that spread, the virus became more deadly to people than it is to chimps, who seldom are bothered much by SIV.\n\nThe research seems to settle any question of HIV’s origin, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS chief.\n\nWhen tracing a virus’ evolution, “it’s important to get as close to the source as you can,” he said. “It’s of historic interest.”
50973
Both species of the virus (HIV-1 and HIV-2) are believed to have originated in West-Central Africa and jumped species (zoonosis) from primates to humans. HIV-1 evolved from a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIVcpz) found in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes. [2] DNA sequencing indicates that HIV-1 (group M) entered the human population in the early 20th century, probably sometime between 1915 and 1941. [3] [4] HIV-2 crossed species from a different strain of SIV, this one found in sooty mangabeys (an Old World monkey) of Guinea-Bissau. [5]\n\nWikipedia knows all.
525083
The AIDS epidemic was discovered June 18, 1981, when the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now classified as Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia) in five gay men in Los Angeles. Originally dubbed GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, health authorities soon realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not gay. In 1982, the CDC introduced the term AIDS to describe the newly recognized syndrome.\nThree of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:\nA plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. \nHIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969. \nHIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976. Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent and more easily transmitted. HIV-1 is the source of the majority of HIV infections throughout the world, while HIV-2 is less easily transmitted and is largely confined to West Africa.[88] Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are of primate origin. The origin of HIV-1 is the Central Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes). It is established that HIV-2 originated from the Sooty Mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon. Freelance journalist Tom Curtis discussed one currently controversial possibility for the origin of HIV/AIDS in a 1992 Rolling Stone magazine article. He put forward what is now known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis, which suggests that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. Although subsequently retracted due to libel issues surrounding its claims, the Rolling Stone article motivated another freelance journalist, Edward Hooper, to probe more deeply into this subject. Hooper's research resulted in his publishing a 1999 book, The River, in which he alleged that an experimental oral polio vaccine prepared using chimpanzee kidney tissue was the route through which SIV crossed into humans to become HIV, thus starting the human AIDS pandemic.
573746
chimps not orangutans nave been found to have  S I V  [ similar to H I V . but if you are bitten by by chimp monkey or coming in to contact with its body fluids  in an open wound while hunting you may . sex is  not the only route though its the commonest
102358
AIDS is a syndrome associated with the HIV virus, which has been isolated to a population of chimps in Africa. How it transferred from chimps to humans is anyone's guess, but my assumption would be that it was not through Homo-Pan sexual relations. I suppose the virus could pass through eating raw infected meat.
695185
Humans are the only known animals that can carry the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS.
439903
HIV is very specific about where it can live. HIV thrives in human cytotoxic T cells. It can sort of live in the T cells of other higher primates, which is why we can use monkeys in hIV research.\n\nHOWEVER, HIV can't live in the digestive tract of a mosquito. For one thing, it's a mosquito: not the right environment for HIV to splice in, replicate and proliferate. Secondly, it's a digestive tract. It has enzymes that can kill the virus particles.\n\nSo that's why mosquitoes can't transmit HIV.
145902
One does not need to have sex to get HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.\n\nAlso, there are other animals who have sex that carry HIV but they do NOT get AIDS.
1033669
In the 1st link below, it is reported that, although, the earliest reported case of AIDS was in 1959-this individual being a seaman from Manchester, England,...that also in 1959 (in regards to your question) scientists found HIV virus in the blood sample taken from a member of the Bantu tribe in Kinshasa of what was then the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).\nI was unable to find any information on a monkey's blood getting into one's bloodstream through an open wound, however, it is believed by many scientists that the virus spread to humans through the infected meat of monkeys.  I guess you could say, monkey's are a staple in Africa, just as beef, chicken, pork, etc., is to us in the U.S.\nYou may find all four links below of interest.\nThere are actually many, many, MANY sites available that are equally interesting, as well as enlightening.