LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists reported new research Wednesday which they say is further proof that the AIDS pandemic was not sparked by polio vaccines used in Africa in the 1950s that were contaminated with a chimpanzee virus.

The controversial theory on the origins of AIDS has been dismissed by many medical experts who say there is no scientific evidence to support it.


But doubts about vaccine safety have persisted and have been blamed for hampering World Health Organization efforts to stamp out polio in countries where it is still a problem.


A team of researchers led by Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona have discovered a new strain of chimpanzee virus near Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is very different from HIV and which, they say, is further evidence that the animals could not have been the source of human AIDS.


"The locally circulating strain (of the chimpanzee virus) is very distantly related to HIV. It is not a virus that could have been the progenitor and therefore HIV did not come from that region," Worobey said in a telephone interview.


He added that chimpanzees in the vicinity of Kisangani are endemically infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that is very different from the human strain.

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