Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1985. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press Herald - Friday, January 4, 1985
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute and the Johns Hopkins University Medical School said detailed studies of the virus believed to cause AIDS -- acquired immune deficiency syndrome -- show that it is indistinguishable from a family of animal disease agents called lentiviruses.
The AIDS agent, a variety of human T-cell leukemia-lymphoma virus called HTLV-3, most closely resembles a lentivirus known as visna virus, says a report in the journal Science.
This animal virus causes arthritis, pneumonia and a brain inflammation called encephalitis in sheep and goats. Other lentiviruses cause disease in cattle and horses.
The researchers said the close similarities between HTLV-3 and lentiviruses suggest that the viruses either may have had a common ancestor at one time or that an animal disease virus may have passed into humans more recently.
"Although this finding is strongly suggestive, it's too premature to call HTLV-3 a visna virus," said Dr. Matthew A. Gonda of the cancer institute, the principal author.
Dr. Robert C. Gallo, another author and a co-discoverer of HTLV-3, said in an interview that despite the similarities, HTLV-3 definitely is not the visna virus crossing over into humans.
"But it may be another related animal virus coming into man," Gallo said, "and this means we have to look more closely at these animals as models and these types of animal viruses."
Gallo said no one knows if the viruses could have stemmed from a common viral ancestor hundreds of thousands of years ago, or if a virus moved between species only decades ago from human exposure to the blood of sheep or goats.
By learning more about how lentiviruses function, the researchers said, scientists may find out how HTLV-3 invades and destroys key cells of the body's protective immune system.
More than 7,100 cases of AIDS have been reported in the United States since 1981 and the number of reported cases of the incurable disease is doubling every six months, say health officials. Victims, who are primarily promiscuous male homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers, lose the ability to ward off infections and other diseases.
The scientists noted that vaccines against animal lentiviral diseases are very difficult to develop because, among other things, the viruses constantly are undergoing genetic change and it is hard to target specific antibodies against them.
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