African malaria gene increases HIV risk'
Susanna Woods
IMC Commercial and Business News
Friday, 18 July 2008
Researchers have discovered that people of African descent commonly carry a genetic variation that protects them against malaria, which in turn makes them up to 40% more susceptible to HIV/AIDS infection – proving that sexual behaviour and social factors are not the only explanations for the spread of the disease.
The 22-year study also revealed that those carrying the gene, who are also HIV-positive, have a survival rate two years higher than those without the gene because it causes AIDS to develop more slowly.
It is all down to a gene called the Duffy Antigen Receptor for Chemokines (DARC), which influences the levels of inflammatory and chemokines, anti-HIV blood factors.
Professor Robin Weiss, from the University College London (UCL), is a leading international authority on HIV and AIDS, and co-author of the study. He explained the significance of the DARC gene: “In sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of people do not express DARC on their red blood cells and previous research has shown that this variation seems to have evolved to protect against a particular form of malaria. However, this protective effect actually leaves those with the variation more susceptible to HIV.”
>snip<
It is estimated that the gene variation may be responsible for around 11% of HIV cases in sub-Saharan Africa, where as many as 25 million people are infected. However, according to the UN’s Roll Back Malaria partnership, there are 300 million severe cases of malaria every year around the world, of which 90% are reported in Africa.
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Well, whatdoyaknow?
Turns out they may
not all be a bunch of immoral sexual degenerates over there in subsaharan Africa. Turns out there may be a alternate explanation for why Africa's been decimated by AIDS.
I actually believed something similar already, having read a very convincing premise put forth about a decade ago, which proposed that those of European descent might have some genetic protection from HIV because most of us are descended from survivors of Bubonic (or "Black") Plague, which ravaged Europe on and off for the better part of three centuries, and which had about a 50-60% fatality rate (not to be confused with the Pneumonic Plague, which had a nearly 100% fatality rate).
The Plague never made significant inroads into Africa, which explained- according to this theory- why Africans were more susceptible to HIV.
I somehow put this idea together with the fact that people of African descent
are more susceptible to sickle-cell anemia because of a gene mutation that affords them some protection against malaria, and that made more sense to me than the popular idea that one in four subsaharan Africans is infected with AIDS because of their
behavior, while fewer than one in two hundred Americans is, because of
our behavior. It's hard to imagine that Africans routinely engage in behavior that is fifty times riskier than that of Americans.
It's obviously in their genes, and ours, and nobody's fault.