The Hindu : Front Page : HIV may prove an ancient virus

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Friday, Dec 19, 2008
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HIV may prove an ancient virus

Peter Beaumont

Lemur provides “missing link”

A mouse-like primate threatened with extinction has provided the “missing link” in the evolutionary history of the HIV virus, promising to transform the scientific understanding of the family of viruses to which HIV belongs.

Research into the Madagascan grey mouse lemur published by a team from Stanford University School of Medicine, California, suggests the family of primate lentiviruses of which HIV is a member may be scores of millions of years old.

Vital insights

The study also suggests the lemurs, which are only found on the Indian Ocean island, may have survived a prehistoric “Aids-like” epidemic en route to developing an immunity to the disease, promising important insights into how the human epidemic might unfold.

It had been believed the two strains of HIV found in humans had existed in primates for one million years at most. Aids itself is thought to have been around for just over 100 years.

The Stanford research suggests that a closely related virus to HIV may have been present in the grey mouse lemur population for at least 14 million years, when the last land bridges between Madagascar and the African continent disappeared. Researchers believe it could even be as much as 85 million years old. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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