final program.qxd - Parallels Plesk Panel

OP 8.1
Primate-to-Human Retroviral Transmission
Lisa Jones-Engel
University of Washington, National Primate Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA
Gregory Engel
Swedish Providence Family Medicine Residency, Seattle, WA, USA
Nonhuman primates are important potential sources for emerging infectious diseases.
Over the past decades political, social and economic forces have brought human and
nonhuman primate populations into increasingly frequent contact, creating new contexts
for interspecific pathogen transmission. However, given the emphasis placed on HIV/SIV,
which has its origins in Africa, the issue of cross-species transmission in Asia and South
America has been largely ignored. What is needed is a global assessment of the diverse
contexts of cross-species pathogen transmission which takes into account the infectious
agents, nonhuman primate populations, affected human populations and the diverse and
complex manner in which the three interrelate. Our research group has studied
bi-directional pathogen transmission between humans and nonhuman primates in Asia
using a multidisciplinary approach. Asia is a particularly compelling setting for this type of
research given the regions' plethora of nonhuman primate species and habitats that also
contain a rich non-primate fauna. What's more, these dynamic primate populations and
the infectious agents they contain are situated amidst the world's densest human
populations (including a growing number of people immunocompromised by HIV and
tuberculosis) in a region bustling with regional and international commerce, and a
popular destination for tourists from around the globe. Beyond documenting interspecies
viral transmission in Asia we are improving our ability to predict emerging primate
zoonoses by using risk analysis models based on our field and experimental data. This
work holds the promise of harnessing data to reduce the zoonotic risks to humans in
contexts where humans and nonhuman primate contact occurs.
ABSTRACTS
“ Focusing FIRST on PEOPLE “ 63 w w w . i s h e i d . c o m