- Note - Well over 10 years ago, one of the world's foremost
virologists from the Pasteur Institute in Paris went to Africa to study
insect transmission of HIV. He did extensive field sampling and collecting
work and eventually found either HIV DNA or live HIV in every single species
of insect that commonly bites humans. When he returned to France and prepared
to publish his work, he and his family received death threats. He did
not publish his research. Furthermore, biting insects (flies and mosquitoes)
are known to transmit scores of different retroviruses and viruses between
cattle and horses, etc. HIV is a retrovirus. Mosquitoes are also certainly
capable of transmitting large numbers of viral and bacterial agents between
human hosts. The dots are extremely easy to connect. -ed.
-
-
- 6-20-2
-
- (SAPA) - A report in the respected British medical journal
Lancet has raised the possibility that an insect might be able to transmit
the Aids-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) - a finding likely
to cause scientists to re-examine the origin of the current HIV pandemic
and how HIV got into the human population in the first place.
-
- The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases quotes and comments
on work by German researchers showing that the stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans)
is capable of feeding on HIV-infected blood and regurgitating an infectious
virus.
-
- The German researchers are from prestigious institutions:
the Universities of Freiburg and Bonn, and the renowned Max Planck Institute
for Biophysical Chemistry.
-
- It has been generally held that biting insects are incapable
of transmitting HIV because they ingest blood from their victims and inject
saliva into their victims via different routes, said Dr Andrew Jamieson,
medical director of Netcare Travel Clinics, in a statement.
-
- 'It would be premature to blame the stable fly for starting
the HIV pandemic'
-
- But the stable fly is different as it uses the first
part of its digestive tract to store ingested blood. Regurgitated material
from stable flies fed on HIV-containing blood has been shown by two of
the researchers, Brandner and Kloft, to contain intact HIV.
-
- It is known that stable flies can transmit other viruses
and retroviruses. These findings raise the possibility that stable flies
feeding on blood-covered bush meat (a euphemism for chimpanzee meat) may
have transmitted the chimpanzee form of HIV, known as SIV or simian immunodeficiency
virus, to humans.
-
- Biting a human after feeding on infected bush meat, the
stable fly may have given the chimpanzee virus the bridge it needed to
cross the species barrier and infect humans. Jamieson said: "The German
theory is highly speculative, and it would be premature to blame the stable
fly for starting the HIV pandemic."
-
- He added that travellers into Africa could take reassurance
from the fact that mosquitoes are unable to transmit HIV - a question frequently
directed to Netcare Travel Clinics.
-
- "Even if it transpires that the stable fly can cause
HIV in humans, the same would not be true of mosquitoes."
-
- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=117_id=qw1024174081465B232_id=1
|
