Polio vaccine samples not linked to AIDS
Abstract
It has been suggested that chimpanzee kidney cultures may have been used in the preparation of oral polio vaccine stocks used in Africa during the late 1950s, and so could have introduced the primate precursor of the immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 into humans1,2. Here we analyse frozen samples of the suspect vaccine by using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify any HIV-1-related nucleic acids or chimpanzee mitochondrial DNA that might be present, but we have failed to detect either. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that HIV-1 was introduced by oral vaccination against poliovirus.
- Publication:
-
Nature
- Pub Date:
- April 2001
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 2001Natur.410.1045B