"Origin and Spread of AIDS"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Origin and Spread of AIDS"

Nature (12/13/90) Vol. 348, No. 6302, P. 578
Karpas, A.

Abstract: Human AIDS very likely began as a lentivirus that naturally infected African monkeys until cross-species transfer occurred through sexual practices involving human inoculation with monkey blood for a supposed aphrodisiac effect, writes A. Kaspar of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. HIV-2 shares roughly 75 percent homology with SIV, indicating simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infections could have given rise to AIDS in West African men. Furthermore, a lentivirus recently isolated from a chimp may be the missing link between HIV-1 and SIV. Hundreds of years of European and Asian slave trade in Africa produced no evidence of HIV infection, so the spread in Africa is a recent event. Epidemiologic evidence indicates the disease has spread since World War II via syringes and needles from the West and injectable antibiotics, extensive migration in Africa, and sexual contacts overseas. More than a dozen cases of other SIV infections of humans indicate the possibility of trans-species infection, in which a virus benign in monkeys becomes deadly in humans, Karpas writes.

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