Researchers Find Evidence of Simian Virus 40
in Kidney Disease

photo-3 icSendicimian Virus 40, a known contaminant of polio vaccines issued more than five decades ago, may be linked to human kidney disease, according to research published recently in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

According to a study by the National Institutes of Health and the University of North Carolina's Departments of Medicine and Pathology, there is evidence that the human kidney can harbor SV40 and that patients with kidney disease shed the virus into their urine.

The research also suggests that SV40 infection is not just …