ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996            TAG: 9601310053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-7  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press 

SCIENTISTS GIVE AIDS TO CHIMP ON PURPOSE MEDICAL FIRST MAY ADVANCE STUDY OF DISEASE

For the first time, scientists have managed to give AIDS to a chimpanzee, a possible substitute for people in testing ways to control the disease.

Since the AIDS epidemic began, about 100 chimps have been intentionally given the AIDS virus in an effort to learn more about the disease. But while those animals got infected, none until now actually developed AIDS. In fact, many scientists doubted whether the disease was even possible in a chimp.

Researchers from the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta described the first chimp AIDS case at a medical conference Tuesday.

One of the things that has made AIDS so difficult to control has been the lack of a so-called animal model - a lab animal that can stand in for people in studies of the disease.

While monkeys get sick with a simian version of HIV, the AIDS virus, researchers fear that insights from studying these animals may not apply to people.

The discovery of true AIDS in a chimpanzee could give scientists their first animal model for the disease. But whether this will be practical is still unclear.

Another drawback is controversy about using chimps for medical studies. These animals are human beings' closest relative, and they are endangered in the wild.

``We believe this to be the first development of AIDS in a chimpanzee infected with HIV,'' Dr. Francis J. Novembre, a virologist, said at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

The animal, code-named C499, was inoculated with HIV in 1985 and quickly became infected. It remained outwardly well until last August, when it developed chronic diarrhea. In November, it came down with pneumonia.

Both of these illnesses are typical signs of AIDS in HIV-infected people. They occur because the body's immune defenses are too weak to fight off common microbes.

Meanwhile, levels of the chimp's helper T cells - the main target of HIV in the bloodstream - have fallen 10-fold since 1990. The chimp is still alive and being treated with antibiotics, just as people with AIDS are, to ward off bacteria.

Last September, the Yerkes researchers were afraid the chimp would die, so they transfused some of its blood into another uninfected chimp. This animal quickly lost helper T cells and appears to be close to getting AIDS, as well.

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