HIV-2: The Sooty Mangabey Connection

Abstract In September of 1984, the year that HIV-1 was unmistakably identified as the prime cause of AIDS, a similar virus was isolated from Asian monkeys by Ron Desrosiers at Harvard’s New England Primate Center in Massachusetts. These research animals had an AIDS-like disease, as did Asian monkeys at several other US primate facilities. None had been infected in the wild. The Harvard animals had been infected by four rhesus macaques shipped in 1970 from the California Regional Primate Center, where they were exposed in the 1960s to sooty mangabeys. On testing, the sootys proved to be SIV-positive. This epidemic among captive primates affected only Asian monkeys, not African monkeys. The AIDS-like immunodeficiency developed over about 10 years, and SIV infection was invariably traced to housing of Asian monkeys with sooty mangabeys or injection with their blood or tissues. The new viruses were called SIV mac and SIV stm since they were isolated from diseased rhesus macaques and stump-tailed macaques