Medical News Warns HIV-Like Virus From Monkeys Could Jump To humans

The global public health community should be on the alert for a family of viruses in African monkeys that have the potential to spill over to humans, researchers warn.

Photo Insert: Known as arteriviruses, this family of viruses is a critical threat to macaque monkeys.

In a new study, scientists noted that while it's not certain what impact these viruses might have on humans, there are troubling parallels to HIV, Medical News reported.

"This animal virus has figured out how to gain access to human cells, multiply itself and escape some of the important immune mechanisms we would expect to protect us from an animal virus. That's pretty rare," said senior author Sara Sawyer, a professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"We should be paying attention to it," she said in a university news release.

Known as arteriviruses, this family of viruses is a critical threat to macaque monkeys. They can cause fatal Ebola-like symptoms in some monkeys. No human infections have been reported, but remaining vigilant could help avoid a future pandemic, the authors noted.

Sawyer's lab used tissue samples from wildlife to help identify which animal viruses among the many circulating might jump to humans. Although arteriviruses are common in pigs and horses, they aren't well studied in non-human primates, according to researchers. Specifically, the team looked at the simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), which has caused deadly outbreaks in captive macaque colonies.

A receptor called CD163 plays a key role in the biology of simian arteriviruses, according to the study, which was published Sept. 30 in the journal Cell. It enables the virus to invade and infect target cells. Researchers did experiments in the lab, leading to the discovery that the virus was adept at latching on to the human version of CD163, getting inside human cells, and replicating.

Similar to HIV and its precursor simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), simian arteriviruses attack immune cells. This disables key defense mechanisms and allows it to take hold in the body long-term.

"The similarities are profound between this virus and the simian viruses that gave rise to the HIV pandemic," said Cody Warren, previously a postdoctoral fellow at CU Boulder and now an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Ohio State University.

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