HIV AIDS

History of HIV/AIDS

by Wikipedia

AIDS is caused by a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which originated in non-human primates in Central and West Africa. While various sub-groups of the virus acquired human infectivity at different times, the present pandemic had its origins in the emergence of one specific strain – HIV-1 subgroup M – in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1920s.

There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent, more easily transmitted, and the cause of the vast majority of HIV infections globally. The pandemic strain of HIV-1 is closely related to a virus found in chimpanzees of the subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which live in the forests of the Central African nations of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. HIV-2 is less transmissible and is largely confined to West Africa, along with its closest relative, a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey inhabiting southern Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and western Ivory Coast.

HIV Origin Story

by Zoltan Fehervari 11/18/2018 Nature

More recent molecular timing and modeling studies have pushed back the earliest appearance of M group HIV-1 to around the beginning of the twentieth century. This would suggest that HIV-1 was circulating cryptically in Africa for generations before factors such as urbanization and mass movement of people propelled it onto the global stage. 
AIDS was first described as a new disease in 1981 (MILESTONE 1), and the causative lentivirus that came to be known as HIV-1 was identified a couple of years later (MILESTONE 2). However, the origins of HIV-1 and the reasons for its explosive appearance and rapid transformation into a global epidemic remained a mystery.
The inklings of an answer began to emerge from two West African patients presenting with an antigenically distinct AIDS-causing virus that subsequently came to be known as HIV-2 (MILESTONE 6). Genetically distant from HIV-1, HIV-2 was instead shown to be closely related to a lentivirus infecting an African monkey—the sooty mangabey. Subsequent studies confirmed that lentiviruses are endemic to many species of African monkeys and some apes—and these have collectively become known as simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs). Sooty mangabeys in particular were found to be naturally infected with a lentivirus known as SIVsmm (with the subscript indicating the name of the infected species), and genetic evidence showed that this virus was transmitted to humans, generating the HIV-2 epidemic.

HIV before the Age of AIDS

by Mary Carmichael FRONTLINE

As soon as HIV was identified in 1983, scientists started trying to understand where it had come from, when it had arisen, and why it had spread. Were they too late? To answer most of their questions, they would have had to witness the virus's evolution. Scientists can track new pathogens such as SARS and avian flu because they produce obvious symptoms almost immediately. But HIV is a stealth virus that takes as many as 10 years to present symptoms; by the time researchers knew enough to wonder about its origins, those origins were in the distant past.

Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa'

by BBC

An international team of scientists say a "perfect storm" of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread.

The Origin of AIDS

by All Things Considered 15/7/200 npr

NPR's Richard Knox reports from Durban, South Africa on a little-noticed study at this year's AIDS Conference. It found that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, is older than anyone suspected.