Scientists investigating a respiratory outbreak in a small chimpanzee town in Uganda's Kibale National Park were devastated to discover that the entire population had caught the common cold, rhinovirus C, in an otherwise healthy chimpanzee population. Five chimpanzees died including Betty, a two year old chimp. Betty’s body was retrieved and autopsied before predators and decay set in. Rhinovirus C was the cause of her death researchers determined, and discovered that there is a species-wide susceptibility of chimps to the virus.
"Chimps seem to be genetically predisposed to have problems with this virus. The virus found in Betty was one that looked like it came from a human, and the level of virus in the lung was comparable to what we see in children." stated James Gern, a senior author of the study and a professor of allergy and immunology in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health
The findings, says Goldberg, are a “cautionary tale about human interactions with wild apes. In Africa, people encounter chimpanzees and other apes when human settlements expand into ape habitats, through activities like tourism and research, and when apes leave the forests to raid crops.”
A group of scientists investigating a 2013 outbreak in Kibale National Park discovered that a human cold virus was responsible for the deaths of five chimps out of a community of 56. Releasing their findings this week in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, the researchers say it was “completely unknown” that the human virus is deadly for chimps.
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The February 2013 outbreak was discovered after the death of a 2-year-old chimp named Betty, who scientists had been tracking. A Ugandan veterinarian was on hand to perform a postmortem in the field, obtaining the samples that eventual lead to the discovery. (The other chimps that died were all adults, up to 57 years old.)
The rhinovirus is the most common viral infection in humans and is responsible for symptoms known as the common cold. Rhinovirus C, the strain that caused the chimps’ deaths, was only discovered in 2010. The strain is known to affect children most severely, often as a precursor to asthma, said James Gern, one of the researchers who studied the outbreak. “It was surprising to find it in chimpanzees, and it was equally surprising that it could kill healthy chimpanzees outright,” said Goldberg.
Outbreaks of respiratory diseases in chimps are not uncommon and mostly go undiagnosed. DNA testing of the Kibale chimps, compared to existing DNA samples revealed that the species is generally more susceptible to the rhinovirus C strain.
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