Monitoring macaque health requires the detection of infectious diseases. Here, we report the screening of a macaque colony for antibodies which indicate selected viral infections. Our results show that infection with beta- and gamma-herpesviruses was frequent, while infection with simian retrovirus type D and simian T cell leukemia virus was not. Measles virus infection was more frequent in animals with extensive contact with humans, but no firm correlation could be established.

The research into therapeutic agents for prevention and treatment of orthopoxvirus (OPXV) infections requires adequate animal models to investigate the efficacy and safety of new vaccines and antiviral compounds against smallpox and other highly pathogenic OPXVs. This study was undertaken to investigate the susceptibility of rhesus monkeys towards the calpox virus, an orthopoxvirus of the species Cowpox virus, which is uniformly lethal in common marmosets, in order to define a new animal model.

Humans and African great apes (AGAs) are naturally infected with several species of closely related malaria parasites. Research on AGA malaria has been driven by the need to understand the origins of human malaria and the risk of transmission of malaria parasites infecting AGAs to humans. The understanding of the ecology of AGA malaria parasites and their impact on AGA health remains relatively poor. We review current knowledge on AGA malaria and identify gaps and future research perspectives.

Transmission of macaque herpes B virus (BV) to humans can induce severe disease. Therefore, diagnostic tests for detecting BV infection are needed. Here, we show that antigens of BV-related non-human primate herpes viruses allow for the detection of antibodies elicited against BV with a higher sensitivity than antigens of human herpes simplex viruses (HSV). Moreover, we provide evidence that using recombinant viral glycoproteins may allow us to discriminate antibody responses against BV and HSV.