Recently, scientists and conservationists have become more concerned over the possible spread of human infections to gorillas. Unfortunately, in a finding from the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, new reports have confirmed that disease can be transmitted between the two species.
The study was led by Gustavo Palacios of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University.
While chimpanzees are considered our closest living relative, gorillas share 98 percent of their DNA with humans. This fact, coupled with increased contact between humans and gorillas over the past 100 years, has forced scientists to pay more attention to gorilla epidemiology.
Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), a subspecies of Eastern Gorilla, are vulnerable to human diseases. Respiratory infections are particularly hazardous and cause one-fifth of all sudden deaths among mountain gorillas.
According to the latest census, only 786 mountain gorillas remain in the wild, living in parks in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they have become popular attractions for tourists. Wild mountain gorillas were declared an endangered species in 2000 and have suffered significant drops in population in the past 20 to 30 years, according to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The ecotourism industry built up around them generates revenue to sustain the species and raises awareness of the animals’ precarious status. Gorilla tourism has dramatically increased the number of people entering the gorillas’ habitats, thus increasing chances for interspecies infection. This, coupled with the fact that infectious disease is the second most common cause of death in mountain gorillas, has made conservationists anxious over the survival of the species.
In 2008 and 2009, the Hirwa group of wild mountain gorillas living in Rwanda suffered two bouts of respiratory disease which included coughing, eye and nose discharge and lethargy. In the 2009 outbreak, 11 of the 12 members were infected. Of those infected, an adult female and a male infant died.
Analysis of the two deceased gorillas’ tissues revealed the presence of the human metapneumovirus (HMPV) RNA virus, a typical cold virus nearly all humans come into contact with.
While the female gorilla appeared to have been killed by a secondary, bacterial infection enabled by the virus, the infant’s death appeared to be directly related to starvation and an umbilical infection that had spread to his kidney, according to the researchers. The source of the virus remains unknown.
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