HIV-2 in rhesus monkeys: serological, virological and clinical results.

Diseases induced by animal retroviruses are not considered to be good models for the human acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) at present. The lack of an animal model for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection presents a main problem in the complete understanding of the pathogenesis of HIV-mediated diseases. Because of the homologies between simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and HIV-2, we inoculated rhesus monkeys with HIV-2 and HIV-2 adapted in vitro to monkey cells. One of the ten animals inoculated developed clinical symptoms that might be related to the infection with HIV-2.