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CHIMPANZEES and gorillas harbour previously unknown herpes viruses that may
be poised to jump species into humans, as happened with HIV. The viruses,
discovered by French researchers, are closely related to the one that causes a
type of skin tumour in humans called Kaposi鈥檚 sarcoma.

Kaposi鈥檚 is a frequent complication of AIDS, but it is also endemic among
people in Central Africa. Viruses similar to the Kaposi鈥檚 virus have been found
in macaques, so Antoine Gessain at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and his
colleagues in Cameroon and Gabon began looking for related viruses in our
closest relatives, the great apes. They found two in chimps and one in gorillas.
Compared with those in macaques, says Gessain, 鈥渢hese are much closer to the
human virus.鈥�

This similarity means that if these ape viruses were to infect humans they
could cause illness, he says. And even if the ape viruses do not cause disease
themselves, says Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, if
they were to infect a person already carrying the human Kaposi鈥檚 virus, the two
viruses could swap genes and create a new and highly dangerous pathogen.

Virologists are concerned that it is becoming increasingly likely that
another ape virus will infect humans. As the timber trade expands into new parts
of the West African forest, the people who move with it start consuming local
鈥渂ushmeat鈥�, including primates.

Gessain says his latest unpublished research suggests that another virus in
the family may already be infecting humans鈥攁 chimp virus that is very
similar to viruses found in macaques in both Africa and Asia. 鈥淚f this family
[of viruses] is already so widely distributed in monkeys and apes, it would be
strange if it were not in humans,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e should look for it.鈥�

Hahn agrees, but cautions that the virus Gessain has found in chimps may be
something that the animals caught from macaques while in captivity. 鈥淭hese
experimental chimps are all babies rescued from the bushmeat trade,鈥� she says.