A virus that spread through a colony of New World titi monkeys also affected humans, it has been revealed.
The virus, which is not common among either population, was discovered in 2009 in California in the monkeys. It was later discovered that a human researcher and a household family member were also infected.
The findings by the team, led by Dr Charles Chiu, assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Centre, California, are published in the July 14, 2011, edition of the open access journal PLoS Pathogens.
The news may provide insights into how new viruses enter the human population. HIV is thought to have originated in monkeys in Africa.
The virus, now known as the titi monkey adenovirus (TMAdV), infected titi monkeys in the California National Primate Research Center.
At the time of the outbreak, a researcher caring for the sick monkeys and two members of the researcher’s family developed a fever and upper respiratory infection.
Researchers still do not know if the infection spread from human to monkey or vice versa, but further studies in both humans and monkeys in Brazil and Africa are being conducted to establish if TMAdV is common in wild populations of monkeys.
It is known that adenoviruses cause a range of illnesses in humans, from cold-like symptoms to diarrhoea and pneumonia. But, unlike influenza or coronaviruses, they had not been known to spread from one species to another.
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