Is human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I more clever than human immunodeficiency virus type 1?
نویسنده
چکیده
SIR—Casseb [1] hypothesizes that human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is “more clever” than human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). One of his reasons is that HTLV-I, unlike HIV-1, has “an exceptionally low capability for causing death in the host.” “Cleverness” is not a biological concept but rather an anthropomorphism. Casseb probably is referring to the biological success of a virus. The only measure of the success of an organism is Darwinian—that is, successful viruses transmit more copies of their genes to new hosts, and unsuccessful ones transmit fewer (or none, thus dying out completely). As has been pointed out, it is not necessarily in the evolutionary interest of a virus to have low pathogenicity [2]. For example, some arthropod-borne viruses are transmitted more efficiently when their host is debilitated and unable to fend off insect vectors. HIV-1 seems to be particularly successful in transmitting itself to new hosts, although most transmissions probably take place when the host is feeling well. It is probable that host death caused by HIV-1 is merely an unfortunate (from the host’s point of view) epiphenomenon, although in fact we do not know if this is the case. HTLV-I may seem “clever” because it does not cause host mortality, but we cannot say that HIV-1 is less “clever” because it often kills its host. HIV-1, however deadly, seems to be remarkably evolutionarily successful at this point in time, and there seems to be no shortage of hosts for the virus to infect in the future.
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
دوره 29 5 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 1998