Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Newsday - July 11, 2000
Laurie Garrett, Staff Writer
The virus, HIV-1, is ancient, reported Dr. Anne-Mieke Vandamme of the Riga Institute in Leuven, Belgium. In collaboration with colleagues in France, Germany and Ireland, Vandamme devised a technique for tracing the family trees of viruses.
"The separation between SIVcpz [chimpanzee virus] and HIV was in 1675 to 1700," Vandamme told scientists. She said that theories on a more recent origin of HIV-1 epidemics in humans, "such as the one blaming vaccination with oral polio vaccine contaminated with SIV [chimp virus], seems very unlikely."
Vandamme's findings are important because they help explain not only how the world's worst recorded epidemic commenced, but also possibly where it is going and how fast. And in one respect they coincide with estimates reached independently at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1930, both research teams have found, the first M-Class form of HIV emerged in Africa.
Scientists don't, of course, have blood samples dating to 1675. The oldest known HIV sample dates to only 1959. So to figure out HIV's history, scientists need to establish what they call the molecular clock of the virus, or the rate at which it changes. But that's tough for HIV, because different strains of the virus today are mutating and evolving at divergent rates.
As for why HIV smoldered in humans invisibly for 300 years, Vandamme said, "A true explosion requires a new mode of transmission or modern behavior," such as use of non-sterile needles, non-sterile blood products and widespread promiscuous sexual behavior.
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