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Published online 16 July 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.948
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African mutation may increase HIV infection
Genetic quirk fends off malaria, but may render Africans more vulnerable to HIV.
A genetic mutation that allows African people to resist a form of malaria may also leave them more prone to HIV infection, according to a genetic survey of 3,400 people. But paradoxically, once infected with HIV, those who had the mutation lived on average 2 years longer than those without it.
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It is interesting to note that DARC linked mutation may increase HIV infection . In India, Malaria is an endemic disease and frequently it assumes an epidemic proportion. Does it mean that such DARC linked mutation may not exist in India?
Malaria is well controlled in most part of India. 80% of its population is safe from malaria. According to 2003 World Health Organization's survey, among 1,781,336 malaria cases 990 (0.055%) were died. P.falciparum cases were 845,173 (47.44%) and P.vivax cases were 936,163 (52.55%). You can see this details in www.who.org
I've read there are large regions in which people are more likely to get malaria, but in the past Africans had avoided living there. Overpopulation has made these regions impossible to keep invisibly roped off. On the other hand, it is generally thought that HIV came to people through the latter's eating meat from another primate, which latter was infected. This bowhunter thinks that eating our fellow primates is the culinary equivalent of incest, and causes equally grave harm to the food web. Had we kept this taboo, there would be no HIV. In North America, we speak of "game," not "bush meat," because we understand and honor hunting. We haven't evolved to deal with zoonotic diseases, because in the long view, both "bush meat" and domesticated animals are very recent anomalies in behavior.