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Role of chimpanzee-derived polio vaccine in origin of HIV refuted
Last Updated: 2001-04-25 14:11:16 EDT (Reuters Health)
WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) - Three independent reports published this week refute the theory that chimpanzee kidney cultures used in the preparation of oral polio vaccine (OPV) stocks in Africa in the late 1950s introduced a precursor to HIV in humans.
Dr. N. Berry and colleagues, from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, Hertfordshire, UK, report in the April 26th issue of Nature that they found no HIV-1 related nucleic acids or chimpanzee mitochondrial DNA in frozen samples of the vaccine. Furthermore, the cells from the two vaccine stocks tested appeared to come from macaques.
Separately, Dr. Edward C. Holmes, from the University of Oxford in the UK, and colleagues assessed the phylogeny of modern HIV-1 strains. The results indicated that the last common ancestor of the main group of HIV-1 strains was a virus in a human host rather than in another primate host, the team says in the same issue of Nature.
In a third study, reported in the April 27th issue of Science, Dr. Simon Wain-Hobson, from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and colleagues confirmed that the OPVs in question were prepared using macaque kidneys. "Given that simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) are confined to African primates, the kidneys could not have been positive for SIV," the researchers emphasize.
In an editorial in Nature, Dr. Robin A. Weiss from University College in London comments that "the new data may not convince the hardened conspiracy theorist who thinks that contamination of OPV by chimpanzee virus was subsequently and deliberately covered up." But Dr. Weiss adds that "those of us who were formerly willing to give some credence to the OPV hypothesis will now consider that the matter has been laid to rest....some beautiful facts have destroyed an ugly theory."
Nature 2001;410:1035-1036,1045-1048. Science 2001;292:743-744.
-Westport Newsroom 203 319 2700
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