Subject: AIDS Patient's Cells Found to Contain Monkey Virus Never Seen in Humans Date: Published: 10/24/91 (114 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Technology & Health: AIDS Patient's Cells Found to Contain Monkey Virus Never Seen in Humans ---- By Jerry E. Bishop Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Researchers in Houston said they discovered that cancer cells from an AIDS patient contained a monkey virus never before seen in humans. How the patient contracted a monkey-virus infection and whether it had anything to do with either his AIDS or his cancer is a mystery. But the case is expected to create a major stir among virus researchers, as well as among scientists studying AIDS and cancer in both humans and monkeys. Scientists said the Houston finding may be meaningless. Nevertheless, the Houston researchers concluded that "an important issue" is whether the presence of the monkey virus in the Houston patient "is an isolated phenomenon or the harbinger of other co-infections of this type." They suggested healthy persons as well as AIDS patients be screened to see if the viruses "have actually entered the human population in large numbers." Some preliminary tests of intravenous drug abusers and of monkey handlers in Houston already are under way to see if they might have been infected by the virus. One of the Houston scientists predicted that researchers will look for possible links between the monkey virus and other human diseases such as cancer or chronic fatigue syndrome, where some think a mysterious virus may be at work. Focusing interest on the Houston case is the nature of the monkey virus. It belongs to a group known as a Type D retroviruses, referring to the way the viruses infect cells. In monkeys these viruses can cause a variety of sometimes-fatal diseases, some of which suppress the immune system. An AIDS-like disease in monkeys, called simian immunodeficiency syndrome, is caused by a retrovirus but of a different variety than Type D. Until now only four retroviruses have been found that infect humans. Two of these, types one and two human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV), cause AIDS. The other two are much rarer but are known to cause either a rare leukemia or a paralytic disorder seen in the tropics. The latter two viruses are known as human T-cell lymphotrophic viruses, or HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. The monkey-virus discovery is described in the November issue of the Journal of Virology by molecular pathologist Richard J. Ford of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, virologist Lawrence A. Donehower of Baylor College of Medicine and Robert C. Bohannon, a doctoral candidate working with Drs. Ford and Donehower. (Mr. Bohannon also is a principal in a small Houston company, Onasco Biotechnologies Inc., which makes diagnostic tests, including a new test for the monkey virus.) The virus was in tumor cells from a 32-year-old man who was diagnosed with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and B-cell lymphoma, a malignancy of certain white blood cells. "The patient just sort of appeared one day with classic AIDS," Dr. Ford recalled. There is no question that the man was infected with HIV, the known cause of AIDS. However, Dr. Ford said, "there was something strange about the lymphoma; it looked different" from the malignant lymphoma cells pathologists usually see in AIDS patients. The cancer cells contained the AIDS virus, but they also contained other viral particles "that looked subtly different" under the electron microscope, the pathologist said. A series of tests, including a breakdown of the molecules that comprised the virus's genetic core, showed the virus to be a Type D retrovirus known as Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, named after the Pfizer Inc. scientist who discovered it years ago. To rule out possible laboratory contamination of the lymphoma cells, the researcher checked biopsies of the patient taken at another hospital and found the virus there also. "As far as can be determined, our patient hadn't any contact with monkeys," the scientists reported. They speculated he might have picked up the monkey virus along with the AIDS virus. Alternatively, they speculated, the monkey virus might have been present but latent until the man was infected by the AIDS virus. "It is tempting to speculate" that concurrent infection by the AIDS and monkey viruses "may have resulted in an accelerated progression of immune deficiency, but no evidence exists to confirm this," they wrote. The Houston researchers wrote they expected their report "will be received with some skepticism" and that infections of other humans by the monkey virus will have to be confirmed to verify their findings. Other researchers said they were, indeed, skeptical of the findings and saw little public health concern, even if the Houston discovery was confirmed. Scientists and technicians working on the simian version of AIDS at Emory University's Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta are regularly tested, and none has ever been found infected by the monkey retroviruses, said associate director Harold McClure. There was some concern years ago about the Type D retroviruses leaping from monkeys to humans, but no evidence was ever found of such human infection, noted veterinarian William Morton at the University of Washington Primate Center in Seattle. The worries at the time, however, raised all kinds of problems about whether people should be tested for the monkey virus and what it would mean if the test was positive, he noted. The new report, he said, might well "uncork that whole area of concern again," Dr. Morton said. [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]