The quest to eradicate malaria in humans could be complicated by new findings that show gorillas carry the parasites, scientists in California said.
The findings were confirmed in fecal samples from 84 gorillas in Cameroon and blood samples from three gorillas in Gabon, said biologist Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year trying to rid humans of malignant malaria.
"But success may be a pyrrhic victory because we could be re-infected by gorillas just as we were originally infected by chimps a few thousand years ago," Ayala wrote this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ayala and his team said increased contact between primates and humans, mostly because of logging and deforestation, increases the risk of parasites being transmitted to humans and further endangers ape populations by spreading diseases to them.
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