Origin of HIV, or Where Does HIV Come From?
Channel: C0nc0rdance
Date: 2010-03-26

Where does HIV come from?

For some of us who remember the sudden emergence of HIV into the popular culture and awareness of the US in the early 1980's, HIV appears to have come from nowhere.  Rumor swirled about where it came from, how it came to infect people from all walks of life around the world.

It's only now, after over 25 years of research and discovery that we can finally start to say with some confidence where HIV came from.

Science. 2000 Jun 9;288(5472):1789-96. Timing the ancestor of the HIV-1 pandemic strains.

Science 313, pp 523-526, 28 July 2006.  Keele, B.F. et al., "Chimpanzee Reservoirs of Pandemic and Nonpandemic HIV-1"

Nature 397, 385-6 (1999).  RA Weis and RW Wrangham. From Pan to pandemic.

Nature 428, 820 (22 April 2004) Origin of AIDS:  Contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted

Nature 460, 515-519 (23 July 2009) Increased mortality and AIDS-like immunopathology in wild chimpanzees infected with SIVcpz.

Nature 397, 436-441 (4 February 1999) Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes

Nature 455, 661-664 (2 October 2008) Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960

Michael Smith, MedPageToday, "Growth of African Cities Fueled Early Rise of HIV"