Gene beats AIDS – and the plague

ABOUT one in ten Europeans is immune to the HIV virus.

They share a genetic mutation, CCR5-A32, which prevents the virus from entering the immune system.

In 2005, experts at the University of Liverpool argued that the CCR5-A32 gene probably provided protection against another deadly disease: the plague.

During the Middle Ages, the plague, also known as the Black Death, killed as many as 40 per cent of Europe’s population.

At the time, only one per cent of Europeans were thought to carry the CCR5A32 gene, but 300 years later this had risen to ten per cent.