HIV Infection || AIDS Treatment and Management

In this article, you will learn about HIV Infection which leads towards Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

History of AIDS:

The origin of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been a subject of scientific research and debate since the virus was identified in the 1980s.

SIV-A Virus identical to HIV:

In 1999, researchers found a strain of SIV in a chimpanzee that was almost identical to HIV in humans.

●   According to the researchers who discovered this connection, it was proved that chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1 and that the virus had at some point crossed species from chimps to humans.

●   The same scientists discovered that the chimps had hunted and eaten two smaller species of monkeys. These smaller monkeys infected the chimps with two different strains of SIV.

●   The two different SIV strains then joined together to form a third virus (SIVcpz) that could be passed on to other chimps. This is the strain that can also infect humans.

First Verified Case of HIV:

The first verified case of HIV was from a blood sample taken in 1959 from a man living in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There were numerous earlier cases where patterns of deaths from common opportunistic infections, now known to be AIDS-defining, suggested that HIV was the cause, but this was the earliest incident where a blood sample could verify infection.

Official Recognition of HIV:

People sometimes say that HIV started in the 1980s in the United States of America (USA), but in fact, this was just when people first became aware of HIV and it was officially recognized as a new health condition.

●   In 1981, a few cases of rare diseases were being reported among gay men in New York and California, such as Kaposi's Sarcoma (rare cancer) and a lung infection called PCP. No one knew why these cancers and opportunistic infections were spreading, but they concluded that there must be an infectious 'disease' causing them.

●   At first, the disease was called all sorts of names relating to the word 'gay'. It wasn't until mid-1982 that scientists realized the 'disease' was also spreading among other populations such as hemophiliacs and heroin users. By September that year, the 'disease' was finally named AIDS.

●   It was only in 1983 that the HIV virus was isolated and identified by researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France. Originally called lymphadenopathy-associated Virus (LAV) the virus was confirmed as the cause of AIDS when scientists working at the USA National Cancer Institute isolated the same virus and called it HTLV-III. LAV and HTLV-III were later acknowledged to be the same.

HIV spread from Kinshasa:

The lack of transport routes into the North and East of Kinshasa accounts for the significantly fewer reports of infections there at the time. By 1980, half of all infections in DR Congo were in locations outside of the Kinshasa area, reflecting the growing epidemic.

Spread towards Haiti:

In the 1960s, the 'B' subtype of HIV-1 had made its way to Haiti. At this time, many Haitian professionals who were working in the colonial Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1960s returned to Haiti. Initially, they were blamed for being responsible for the HIV epidemic and suffered severe racism, stigma, and discrimination as a result.

HIV-1 subtype M is now the most geographically spread subtype of HIV internationally. By 2014, this subtype had caused 75 million infections.