PARIS, Sept 13 (AFP) - The great apes of Central Africa may be a reservoir for herpes viruses that could leap the species barrier and infect humans, French scientists fear.

They say that genetic sequences from three new types of viruses, discovered in four chimpanzees and a gorilla, show them to be closely related to a human viral agent called a rhadinovirus.

One of three sub-families of the herpes virus, the human rhadinovirus is associated with a dark, patchy form of skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, a well-known symptom of full-blown AIDS.

Writing in Thursday's issue of the science weekly Nature, the team, from the Pasteur Institute, say they are worried that the virus could jump to humans, perhaps through a bite from an ape or through eating its meat.

"The increased contact between great apes and humans in central Africa generated by hunting and butchering for local meat and/or the 'bushmeat trade,' as well as by recent socio-economic change such as intense commercial logging, provides more opportunity for interspecies viral transmission," they say.

Some epidemiologists say that this is how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, first spread among humans.

They speculate that HIV is in fact a sub-type of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which as its name implies exists in apes and monkeys.

Some studies trace the AIDS epidemic back to central Africa in the first half of the 20th century, perhaps when rainforest inhabitants ate a species of chimpanzee which carried HIV but was immune to it.

The virus spread rapidly in the latter years of the century thanks to the sexual revolution and urban migration.

Other ailments believed to have jumped the species barrier are various 'flu viruses and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a fatal brain disorder believed to be contracted from eating beef from "mad" cows.

Rhadinoviruses have previously been spotted in several animal species, including some monkeys, but this is the first time that they have been detected in the great apes, which are often consumed as "bush meat" in central Africa.

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