Where Did Aids Come From And How Did It Start

Risk Factors Contributing To The Black Hiv Rate

Access to healthcare is very important in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS. It can be affected by health insurance which is available to people through private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid which leaves some people still vulnerable. Historically, African-Americans have faced discrimination when it comes to receiving healthcare.

Homosexuality is viewed negatively in the African-American Community. “In a qualitative study of 745 racially and ethnic diverse undergraduates attending a large Midwestern university, Calzo and Ward determined that parents of African-American participants discussed homosexuality more frequently than the parents of other respondents. In analyses of the values communicated, Calzo and Ward reported that Black parents offered greater indication that homosexuality is perverse and unnatural”.

Origin And Distribution Of Sivcpz

Of the many primate lentiviruses that have been identified, SIVcpz has been of particular interest because of its close genetic relationship to HIV-1 . However, studies of this virus have proven to be challenging because of the endangered status of chimpanzees. The first isolates of SIVcpz were all derived from animals housed in primate centers or sanctuaries, although infection was rare in these populations. Collective analyses of nearly 2,000 wild-caught or captive-born apes identified fewer than a dozen SIVcpz positive individuals . Because other primate species, such as sooty mangabeys and African green monkeys, are much more commonly infected, both in captivity and in the wild , this finding raised doubts about whether chimpanzees represented a true SIV reservoir. To resolve this conundrum, our laboratory developed noninvasive diagnostic methods that detect SIVcpz specific antibodies and nucleic acids in chimpanzee fecal and urine samples with high sensitivity and specificity . These technical innovations, combined with genotyping methods for species and subspecies confirmation as well as individual identification, permitted a comprehensive analysis of wild-living chimpanzee populations throughout central Africa.

Where Does Hiv Come From

HIV is thought to have occurred after people ate chimps that were carrying theSimian Immunodeficiency Virus .

HIV is a type of lentivirus, which means it attacks the immune system. SIV attacks the immune systems of monkeys and apes in a very similar way. This suggests HIV and SIV are closely related, and that SIV in monkeys and apes crossed over to humans to become HIV.

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Homeless People And Intravenous Drug Users In New York

A volunteer social worker called Betty Williams, a Quaker who worked with the homeless in New York from the seventies and early eighties onwards, has talked about people at that time whose death would be labelled as “junkie flu” or “the dwindles”. In an interview for the Act Up Oral History Project in 2008, she said: “Of course, the horror stories came, mainly concerning women who were injection-drug users … who had PCP pneumonia , and were told that they just had bronchitis.” She continues: “I actually believe that AIDS kind of existed among this group of people first, because if you look back, there was something called junkie pneumonia, there was something called the dwindles that addicts got, and I think this was another early AIDS population way too helpless to ever do anything for themselves on their own behalf.”

Julia Epstein writes in her book Altered Conditions: Disease, Medicine and Storytelling that: “As we uncover more of the early history of HIV infection, it becomes clear that by at least the 1970s the virus was already making major inroads into the immune systems of a number of diverse populations in the United States and had for some time been causing devastation in several countries in Africa.”

The Evolution Of Research And Treatment

In September 1985, President Ronald Reagan called AIDS research a top priority for his administration. This came amidst criticism that government funding was inadequate and not enough had been done to find a treatment or cure. This was Reagans first public statement about AIDS.

Zidovudine, commonly known as AZT, was introduced in 1987 as the first treatment for HIV. Scientists also developed treatments to reduce transmission during pregnancy.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton hosted the first White House Conference on HIV and AIDS, and called for a vaccine research center. This center later opened in 1999.

Throughout the years, the government has continued to fund HIV- and AIDS-related:

• systems of care
• studies and research

In 1996, in Vancouver, researchers at the 11th International Conference on AIDS introduced the concept of highly active antiretroviral therapy . This regimen requires people with HIV to take a combination of at least three medications daily. HAART, which is commonly known as antiretroviral therapy, became the new treatment standard in 1997.

Between 1996 and 1997, deaths from HIV in the United States, largely as a result of HAART.

Also in 1997, the FDA approved Combivir. Combivir combines the drugs zidovudine and lamivudine into a single medication, making HIV medications easier to take.

The FDA continues to approve HIV medical products, regulating:

• product approval

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Symptoms Of Hiv Infection

Most people experience a short flu-like illness 2 to 6 weeks after HIV infection, which lasts for a week or 2.

After these symptoms disappear, HIV may not cause any symptoms for many years, although the virus continues to damage your immune system.

This means many people with HIV do not know they’re infected.

Anyone who thinks they could have HIV should get tested.

Some people are advised to have regular tests as they’re at particularly high risk.

Origin And Epidemic Emergence

Several of the theories of HIV origin accept the established knowledge of the HIV/SIV phylogenetic relationships, and also accept that bushmeat practice was the most likely cause of the initial transfer to humans. All of them propose that the simultaneous epidemic emergences of four HIV groups in the late 19th-early 20th century, and the lack of previous known emergences, are explained by new factor that appeared in the relevant African regions in that timeframe. These new factor would have acted either to increase human exposures to SIV, to help it to adapt to the human organism by mutation , or to cause an initial burst of transmissions crossing an epidemiological threshold, and therefore increasing the probability of continued spread.

Genetic studies of the virus suggested in 2008 that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to the Belgian Congo city of Léopoldville , circa 1910. Proponents of this dating link the HIV epidemic with the emergence of colonialism and growth of large colonial African cities, leading to social changes, including a higher degree of non-monogamous sexual activity, the spread of prostitution, and the concomitant high frequency of genital ulcer diseases in nascent colonial cities.

Social changes and urbanization

Colonialism in Africa

This theory was later dubbed “Heart of Darkness” by Jim Moore, alluding to the book of the same title written by Joseph Conrad, the main focus of which is colonial abuses in equatorial Africa.

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Is There Only One Type Of Hiv

No, there are actually two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2, and they have slightly different origins.

HIV-1 is closely related to the strain of SIV found in chimps. While HIV-2 is closely related to the strain of SIV found in sooty mangabeys monkeys. The crossover of HIV-2 to humans is believed to have happened in a similar way as HIV-1 .

HIV-2 is far more rare, and less infectious than HIV-1, so it infects far fewer people. It is mainly found in a few West African countries, such as Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

To complicate things further, HIV is also classified by four main groups of viral strain , each of which has different genetic make-up. HIV-1 Group M is the strain that has caused the majority of HIV infections in the world today, meaning it is the dominant strain.

Groups And Subtypes Of Hiv

Genetic studies have led to a general classification system for HIV that is primarily based on the degree of similarity in viral gene sequence. The two major classes of HIV are HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is divided into three groups, known as group M , group O , and group N . Worldwide, HIV-1 group M causes the majority of HIV infections, and it is further subdivided into subtypes A through K, which differ in expression of viral genes, virulence, and mechanisms of transmission. In addition, some subtypes combine with one another to create recombinant subtypes. HIV-1 group M subtype B is the virus that spread from Africa to Haiti and eventually to the United States. Pandemic forms of subtype B are found in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Subtypes A, C, and D are found in sub-Saharan Africa, although subtypes A and C are also found in Asia and some other parts of the world. Most other subtypes of group M are generally located in specific regions of Africa, South America, or Central America.

In 2009 a new strain of HIV-1 was discovered in a woman from Cameroon. The virus was closely related to a strain of SIV found in wild gorillas. Researchers placed the new virus into its own group, HIV-1 group P, because it was unique from all other types of HIV-1. It was unclear whether the newly identified virus causes disease in humans.

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Pop Culture Opens Up Conversations

In 1985, actor Rock Hudson became the first major public figure to announce he had AIDS. Before he died that same year, he donated $250,000 to help establish the organization later known as amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Friend and actress Elizabeth Taylor was the national chairperson until her death in 2011.

In 1987, Princess Diana also made international headlines after she shook hands with an HIV-positive man.

Pop culture icon Freddie Mercury, singer for the band Queen, passed away from AIDS-related illness in 1991. Since then, many other public figures have revealed that theyre HIV-positive, including:

• tennis star Arthur Ashe
• former basketball star and entrepreneur Magic Johnson
• Pedro Zamora, a cast member on MTVs The Real World: San Francisco
• actor Charlie Sheen, who announced his status on national television in 2015
• hairstylist and television personality Jonathan Van Ness
• actor and singer Billy Porter

What Needs To Happen

The theme of this World AIDS Day Know Your Status is important. One in four people with HIV dont know that they have HIV. To bridge some critical gaps in the availability of HIV tests, WHO recommends the use of self-tests for HIV. WHO first recommended HIV self-testing in 2016, and now more than 50 countries have developed policies on self-testing. WHO, working with international organizations such as Unitaid and others, supported the largest HIV self-testing programmes in six countries in southern Africa. This programme is reaching people who have not tested themselves before, and is linking them to either treatment or prevention services. This World AIDS Day, WHO and the International Labour Organization will also announce new guidance to support companies and organizations to offer HIV self-tests in workplace. People with HIV often have other infections known as co-morbidities such as TB or hepatitis. One in three deaths in people with HIV is from TB. Around 5 million people are living with both HIV and viral hepatitis. One in three people with HIV has heart disease. This has meant that HIV care has long needed joined-up care, although this doesnt always happen in practice. WHO is now promoting person-centred health services to all people living with HIV, to meet their holistic health needs, not just their HIV infection linking HIV services with those for TB, sexual and reproductive health, non-communicable diseases and mental health, says Dr Hirnschall.

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The History Of Aids In Africa

It all started as a rumour Then we found we were dealing with a disease. Then we realised that it was an epidemic. And, now we have accepted it as a tragedy. – Chief epidemiologist in Kampala, Uganda

There is now conclusive evidence that HIV originated in Africa. A 10-year study completed in 2005 found a strain of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus in a number of chimpanzee colonies in south-east Cameroon that was a viral ancestor of the HIV-1 that causes AIDS in humans.

A complex computer model of the evolution of HIV-1 has suggested that the first transfer of SIV to humans occurred around 1930, with HIV-2 transferring from monkeys found in Guinea-Bissau, at some point in the 1940s .

Studies of primates in other continents did not find any trace of SIV, leading to the conclusion that HIV originated in Africa.

The 1960s- Early cases of AIDSExperts studying the spread of the epidemic suggest that about 2,000 people in Africa may have been infected with HIV by the 1960s. Stored blood samples from an American malaria research project carried out in the Congo in 1959 prove one such example of early HIV infection.The 1970s The first AIDS epidemicIt was in Kinshasa in the 1970s that the first epidemic of HIV/AIDS is believed to have occurred. The emerging epidemic in the Congolese capital was signalled by a surge in opportunistic infections, such as cryptococcal meningitis, Kaposis sarcoma, tuberculosis and specific forms of pneumonia.

Confusion, stigma and despondence

Roll Out

The Patient Zero Myth

For decades, a French-Canadian airline employee named Gaetan Dugas, has been known as Patient Zero in the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

Dugas, a man who had sex with men , died in 1984. Since then he has been blamed by some as a primary source for the spread of HIV in North America.

Dugas was one of the primary villains in the 1987 book, And the Band Played On, by San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts.

However, the researchers now say Dugas was falsely accused and unfairly blamed.

Gaetan Dugas is one of the most demonized patients in history, and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fueled epidemics with malicious intent, said Richard McKay, D.Phil., a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Cambridges Department of History and Philosophy of Science, in a press release.

In fact, McKay says, Dugas actually provided scientists with valuable information before he died.

Dugas told researchers after he contracted HIV that he had 750 sexual partners the previous three years. That wasnt necessarily an unusual number. Researchers said 65 percent of men in a Los Angeles cluster study at the time reported having more than 1,000 sexual partners in their lifetimes.

Much of that sexual connection was with anonymous partners, so many HIV patients couldnt give medical officials any names.

However, McKay says, Dugas provided medical officials with 72 names. That helped scientists track down a wide range of people infected with HIV.

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New Class Of Antiretrovirals

In 1995, the FDA approved saquinavir, the first in a different anti-HIV drug class called protease inhibitors. Like NRTIs, protease inhibitors stop the virus from copying itself, but at a different stage during the infection.

A year later came yet another class of antiretrovirals, called non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor , including nevirapine . Similar to AZT, NNRTIs shut down HIV by targeting the enzymes it needs to multiply.

These drugs paved the way to a new era of combination therapy for HIV/AIDS. Doctors began prescribing saquinavir plus AZT or other antiretrovirals. This combination therapy was dubbed highly active antiretroviral therapy . That approach became the new standard of care for HIV in 1996. HAART greatly lengthened the life span of people with AIDS.

Why Do Scientists Look At Recent Samples Of Hiv To Determine The Virus’ Overall Age Wouldn’t It Be Better To Use Older Samples That Haven’t Had As Much Time To Mutate

It would, but scientists don’t have that luxury. Other than the 1959 sample, there are very few preserved specimens of HIV-infected tissue that predate the early ’80s, when the virus was first recognized by health authorities. Researchers still hope there are forgotten samples in African freezers. “There has to be some serum or plasma somewhere, and given modern technology we could fish out the virus,” says Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and one of the world’s leading authorities on HIV.

But even if those samples are found someday, they won’t necessarily yield definite answers about the virus’ age, says Korber: “Often, you can’t get anything out of samples like that.” Most African samples are made of blood serum, and serum samples contain viral RNA, which degrades much faster than the DNA found in tissue samples. In fact, says Ho, the 1959 sample, which was sequenced by his laboratory, was kept in a freezer but still didn’t survive the ravages of time. “It was completely dried up,” he says. “We were only able to get small pieces , and we had to stitch them together.”

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A Timeline Of Hiv And Aids

The HIV.gov Timeline reflects the history of the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic from the first reported cases in 1981 to the presentwhere advances in HIV prevention, care, and treatment offer hope for a long, healthy life to people who are living with, or at risk for, HIV and AIDS.

View a timeline of the current Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative. Please visit HIVHistory.org for a timeline of the global and domestic response to the HIV epidemic.

Stages Of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

Stage I: Acute HIV infection

• A huge number of HIV is present in the blood, making the person contagious.
• The bodys natural response to infection is shown by flu-like symptoms.
• Only antigen or antibody tests or nucleic acid tests can diagnose acute infection.

Stage II: Chronic HIV infection

• Also called asymptomatic HIV infection or clinical latency that may last a decade or longer, but some may progress faster.
• HIV is active but reproduces at low levels.
• People remain asymptomatic during this phase though they can transmit HIV to others unknowingly.
• At the end of this phase, the amount of HIV in the blood goes up and the CD4 cell count goes down.
• Symptoms may begin as the person moves into stage III.
• People who have taken HIV medicine as prescribed may never move into stage III.

Stage III: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

• The last and most severe phase of HIV infection.
• People with AIDS have damaged immune systems, leading to severe illnesses called opportunistic infections.
• The diagnosis of AIDS is confirmed when the CD4 cell count drops below 200 cells/mm or the presence of certain opportunistic infections.
• A high viral load makes the person extremely infectious.
• If left untreated, the survival period is approximately three years.

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