For example, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C can only
infect humans and chimpanzees, and although this species barrier prevents us from being susceptible to every infection out there, the flipside is that finding treatments for human infections can be extremely difficult.
Not exact matches
The scientists conclude that «it will be important to examine whether
chimpanzee predation on monkeys has led to other SIV acquistions
and whether the resulting
chimpanzee - adapted SIVs are more likely to
infect humans.»
Researchers have identified the evolutionary origins of
human herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1
and -2, reporting that the former
infected hominids before their evolutionary split from
chimpanzees 6 million years ago while the latter jumped from ancient
chimpanzees to ancestors of modern
humans — Homo erectus — approximately 1.6 million years ago.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the evolutionary origins of
human herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1
and -2, reporting that the former
infected hominids before their evolutionary split from
chimpanzees 6 million years ago while the latter jumped from ancient
chimpanzees to ancestors of modern
humans — Homo erectus — approximately 1.6 million years ago.
Adenovirus 5 has 50 or so known relatives that
infect humans and so in principle could also be used as a basis for vaccines, as could one from a
chimpanzee.
For decades, researchers believed only primates —
humans,
chimpanzees and a few species of monkeys — could be
infected by HAV.
When researchers sequenced the
chimpanzee genome in 2005, the biggest difference between it
and the
human genome was the extinct PtERV1 retrovirus, which inserted its DNA into the cells it
infected like HIV does today.
Of the three strains of HIV known to
infect humans, we know that two — the one causing the global AIDS epidemic
and another that has
infected a small number of people in Cameroon — came from a
chimpanzee virus called SIV.
The decreased levels of neutralizing Abs to TMAdV in the researcher (1 ∶ 32)
and a family member (1 ∶ 8) relative to those in
infected titi monkeys (up to > 1 ∶ 512) are consistent with a recent study showing much higher levels of neutralizing antibodies in
chimpanzees than in
humans with adenovirus infections, possibly due to more robust adenovirus - specific T - cell responses in
humans than in monkeys [45].
Humans and chimpanzees, for instance, have slightly different versions of the hepatitis B virus, both of which likely mutated from a version that
infected their shared ancestor more than four million years ago.
Sequencing of a P. malariae relative that
infects chimpanzees reveals similar signatures of selection in the P. malariae lineage to another Plasmodium lineage shown to be capable of colonization of both
human and chimpanzee hosts.