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Scientists succeeded in creating a strain of the human AIDS virus that can infect and multiply in monkeys. This will help test vaccines on monkeys before trying them in people. Researchers managed to obtain the new strain of HIV by altering a singe gene in the human version.
The HIV strain – called simian-tropic HIV-1, or stHIV-1 - multiplies in injected monkeys just as it does in humans, but the animal surpasses the virus and it does not make it sick, the scientists who carried out the study said.
However, this “cousin” of the HIV which causes a disease quite similar to AIDS in monkeys is not a perfect substitute. It affects only certain types of monkeys and may act differently, but scientists hope this is just a first step in the process of testing almost all types of HIV-treatments on monkeys and then giving them to humans.
The findings of the research were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
High HIV Infections
In other HIV-related news, infections are soaring in Hong Kong. According to data released by the Hong Kong Center for Health Protection, there were 435 new HIV infections in Hong Kong last year, a record high number and 5% higher compared to 2007.
The major cause of the sky-high increase of infections continues to be sexual transmission. 131 of the 435 HIV victims said they got it through heterosexual exposure, while 145 of the victims said they acquired the virus through homosexual or bisexual exposure. The rest of the HIV positive were infected when injecting drugs (40 cases), through blood to blood product infusion (4 cases) and through other ways.
The news about the recent high level of HIV infections comes after the Hong Kong health officials warned that the rate of infections is very high and growing in the city’s gay community. Hong Kong experts said there were clusters of up to 58 infections tracing to the same source of infection.
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