Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 1 October 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1143
News
Tissue sample suggests HIV has been infecting humans for a century
48-year-old lymph node biopsy reveals the history of the deadly virus.
A biopsy taken from an African woman nearly 50 years ago contains traces of the HIV genome, researchers have found. Analysis of sequences from the newly discovered sample suggests that the virus has been plaguing humans for almost a century.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email redesign@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
This is one of the most stupid discovery I have ever heard. You will blame every single human plague on Africa, This is against all the Theories of evolutionary biology where The descents of the people that lived in the area might have developed a kind of resistance instead of being vulnerable to a new strain of the Virus. This is very disturbing, what about all the Slaves you moved around to the Western Hemisphere? What about all the sailors and rapist colonial administrator? How come they did not bring it back to Europe and spread it all over Europe? Please stop insulting our intelligence.
Look, I don't subscribe to Sarah Palin's timeline of Dinosaurs and Fred Flintstone sharing the landscape, however, I find innumerable components of science that push the envelope of reason as well. HIV is older than your great-grandparents, uh-huh! And I'll bet that the US bio weapons effort is just ecstatic about this deflection. So now these members of science play to the bio-jackboot population controllers with this 'revelation' that those sex-crazed Africans of course just couldn't stop themselves from pulling chimpanzees (I thought the original scientific theory was "green monkeys") out of the trees for a quickie. The HIV/AIDS modes are a psychological target specific killer focusing upon society's typed 'degenerates? (notwithstanding the small percent of 'accidental' infections). Yet these 'esteemed' researchers attempt to allege that this virus somehow exhibits some kind of prejudicial intelligence? And I suppose that cockroaches invented nuclear holocaust? considering (reportedly ) that they?ll survive.
Sa Mo's comment is very interesting to me because I was having some of the same thoughts as I read the article (blaming plagues on Africa). I'm very surprised by the news of the study and would like to know more information.
I must say that I am disappointed in the rather senseless comments that have been posted thus far - I would expect more rational thought in an arena such as this. Why does this need to be perceived as some sort of "blame" game with Africa? As long as people continue to get hung up on these irrelevant conspiracy theories, any hope of real progress in fighting HIV / AIDS in Africa and world wide will continue to be stunted. Let's put this irrational thinking aside and show real compassion by trying to bring about help for those infected and at risk - as opposed to engaging in mere conjecture.
I'm not exactly sure how the first poster can say that this research is either racist, or somehow insulting the intelligence of the readers. A comprehensive look at the path that AIDS traveled prior to the 1980's puts it squarely in Africa. This has nothing to do with race, as the virus does not discriminate on those terms. It is about origins, and how a disease evolves. Furthermore, to the point about the slave trade, the research points to an an obscure virus in its infancy, which did not progress until far after the dawn of the industrial revolution and the end of the slave-trade in the US and Europe- thus the connection can not be made. In fact, it jives very well with what is known about the infected population- that it started in Africa, moved to Europe and the United States via the Carribean. It is a virus, people. It started somewhere and spread. And anyone who claims that empirical origins are racist, are just as misguided as those who claimed that it was a punishment from God for homosexual men. I personally found this research to be very exciting, and hopefully will play a part in some form of remedy to the problem. Let's not play the blame-game.
It continues to amaze me, as a teacher of virology who tells big classes every year where HIV comes from, how every year some clique of students takes the African origin of HIV personally, as a direct affront. I echo the correspondent above: it is a virus, people. Viruses infect animals, they infect people, and sometimes spread from one to the other - and back, if you are a zoo animal and catch something from your handler. The AIDS pandemic is an accident of sociology, demography, access to high-speed, long-distance travel - and truck routes, and truck drivers. It happens that it originated in Africa. So did the human race - only a lot longer ago. Inevitably, as humans encroached on apes, things get passed across. And don't spread, much, until...someone puts a road through the village. Why don't people get more exercised about the origins of HTLV, another retrovirus that almost certainly jumped from monkeys to humans? Except that happened many thousands of years ago, and in south-east Asia, not Africa. And for the same reasons: people eat monkeys and great apes. For that matter, it is speculated that chimpanzees got SV-CPZ from vervet (I HATE the term "green") monkeys - and that it may have caused a population bottleneck, some 100 000 years ago. I note that chimpanzees are known to eat vervets. So, Nig Boo and Sa Mo: grow up. Read around the subject some more.
"A comprehensive look at the path that AIDS traveled prior to the 1980's puts it squarely in Africa. This has nothing to do with race, as the virus does not discriminate on those terms." For that matter, it can be taken as an indictment of racist colonialism. Worobey suggests that the earliest the virus could have appeared was 1884; the Congo Free State was established in 1885. Colonialism may well kill in unexpected ways.
The new finding is important in many ways. It shows how long vital issues may exist in the environment before they are discorvered. This is why efforts in research and development must continue. My fellow Africans must calm their nerves. Scientific discorveries are useful to us all no matter where they came from. I am not sure the researcher meant to slight Africans by their focus, rather they might have been directed by the history of HIV as we know it. As in any epidemiological investigation efforts are often directed to where the problems we seek may be found. If it is true HIV existed for over 70 years before we knew of it at epidemic, what a difference had we found it earlier. We must therefore search for other such unknown deadly diseases before the bubbles burst, either in Africa or elsewhere.
Ditto, Andrew Cates and Ed Rybicki. VIRUSES DO NOT DISCRIMINATE. THAT'S THE BEAUTY AND THE TERROR OF THEM. (REMEMBER, THEY ARE NOT EVEN LIVING BEINGS). THIS RESEARCH IS NOT RASCIST. THESE SCIENTISTS ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO THE RESPONSIBLE THING, AND ARE TRYING TO STUDY THIS VERY, VERY COMPLEX VIRUS FROM MANY DIFFERENT ANGLES. ONE WAY TO LOOK AT IT IS THE HISTORY AND THE ORIGIN OF IT, WHICH IS WHAT IS BEING REPORTED HERE. HOPEFULLY, PERHAPS IN MY LIFETIME, WE WILL HAVE A VACCINE, AND SO MUCH SUFFERING WILL BE ALLEVIATED. ALMOST 30 YEARS OF SUFFERING THAT HAS AFFECTED PEOPLE OF ALL RACES AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS.
I for one find this article as fascinating as it is informative. Anything we can discover about these types of devastating viruses, in hopes that we may be able in the future to recognize before they become a serious health crisis, would be welcome. I would also hope that science might extend itself in the same way to a current sphirochetal illness that has supposedly been around equally as long. Why is it that there is so much defiant medical ignorance and mis-reporting of what is more accurately, a horrendous systemic disease affecting millions of citizens in both North America, Europe, and elsewhere. While doctors claim this complex illness which has similarity to syphilis, is "cured" within three weeks of basic antibiotics,the truth is far more sinister. Borrelia (lyme) bacteria have the ability to disable the immune system and cloak themself in ways similar to the aids virus, which slowly and painfully causes a steady deterioration of all of the body's systems. They can mutate back and forth between three separate forms to evade antibiotics, and have incredible complex gene expression. The CDC acknowledges that it can be passed to unborn children, but what about our sexual partners;and isn't it true that mosquitoes and fleas are also vectors of this disease? A very few informed disease specialists currently feel that this is our next AIDS epidemic, but we are as blind to this one as we were to AIDS, perhaps because as the article alluded to, the disease is not immediate and is not fatal in the early stages. It certainly seems to be true that we are unable (or unwilling) to address these things until they become life threatening, as evidenced by the shocking harassment and abuse lyme treating doctors are receiving. Chronic lyme disease does not techinically exist according to our medical leaders, but how can it be that long-term untreatable illnesses like ALS, improve with antibiotics when a patient is treated for the (lyme) borrelia bacteria? Lyme diease is thought to be the same mild illness described in literature more than a century ago, but is it really?
One thing that I rarely hear about in the discussion of the onset of AIDS in the US in the 1980s, is the fact that it is believe to have been introduced through a hepatitis A vaccine that was being tested from 1977-1979 with a target demographic of the gay populations of San Francisco and New York. The vaccine was approved and administered until 1984 when it was discovered to have had infected blood used as its foundation. The vaccine was developed in Africa and Africa was the source of the blood that was used in developing the vaccine. It was always believed to have been caused by a jump between species through the eating of bush meat such as the chimpanzees that this article mentions. This isn't a comment on the race of the people, its just that humans and simians do not co-exist in Europe or North America. The idea that AIDS was spread through the Hep A vaccine and its human drug trial is a position that is held by such AIDS experts as Matilda Krim and many others.
Some commentators think that HIV has no African origins, and that people suggesting so are racists. Maybe theories that bird flu originates from Asia are also racist. Or even the theory that humans originate from Africa is racist... it's best not to pinpoint any place, maybe everything just pops up spontaneously at random places around the world... It's so easy to accuse someone... much harder to work patiently for years (e.g. extracting a virus from old specimens) without any guarantee of success...
This is an interesting discover. We hope this is the begining of hope to find the cure of this deadly disease. One of the things I have always commented is that to solve a certain problem, first we need to discover the cause. unfortunately, the case of HIV has been since repported with missing information: where does HIV comes from, what did happen to the first case? and so on...Now, the most interesting thing scientists should work on, would be to find out "how chimpanzees got HIV and how it passed to humans". I beleive that today, more than ever, we need to find out what caused HIV, so that vacines may be addressed. it happened like this in several diseases, actually considered cured disease.
Is this topic really too taboo for some people to handle? I read about this article's main components in yesterday's edition of a local newspaper, and my interest peaked immediately. The belief that HIV was transmitted to humans from chimpanzees is an idea that I have been interested in since high school. NO. Africans were not snatching chimps "out of the trees for a quickie." Let's be realistic. No scientist remotely places the blame of this on Africans. Think about it: HIV is transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids. There are so many ways the disease could have jumped & affected humans despite crossing species [which is an entirely different topic completely]: a bite; butchering a chimp while you have a cut on your hand or arm. There are so many other possibilities - why jump to the irrational conclusions people are making?
To the comments that say HIV-1 does not have a racial component to it must be admitting that it spreads seven to ten times faster in America among the black population because of homosexuality, promiscuity, release of convicts, and sharing of needles. The present research is wrong. There is a genetic component to HIV-1 and HIV-2, which science is now confirming (I knew this by 1985, the CDC admits this in 2007.) The original SIV came from the Sooty Mangabey, not chimpanzees, which I also knew in l985 and was confirmed in 2007. I copywrite a book in 1994 that explains it all. It shows why and how the disease originated, and there is nothing over the past decades to disprove what I know to be the truth. What has been swept under the rug is the Kaposi Sarcoma component of the viron. Since the disease was man made causes it to mutate at a much faster pace, which means that finding a vaccine is impossible. www.thenazivirus.com explains it all.
I have always thought that since Kaposi's Sarcoma has been associated exclusively with HIV/AIDS, it was obvious that HIV/AIDS would have predated the identification of this tumor in 1872. I expect that if it did indeed come from Africa, the source would most likely be the equatorial africa, specifically near or in the Ruwenzori mountains.
About the posts by people claiming that racism is involved in this, let me say that we as a species came from Africa too. IF THE THESIS THAT EVERY PLAGUE CAME FROM AFRICA, THE SPECIES HOMO Sapiens (White, Black and any other color) MUST THEREFORE BE A PLAGUE. Quod erat demonstrandum
I have searched the text above and have not found the word "polio". Can somebody please refer me to a clear article or clip on why some people may believe it important to suppress the fact that AIDS developed in humans because of a polio vaccine campaign in the Congo in the 1950s, incorporating the ethics of the argument that the western medicine may wish to maintain a monopolistic stranglehold on human-kind? I would like to know if anyone has analysed what went wrong, and how such tragedies can be prevented in the future. I am asking this question as a person whose family and life have been devastated by AIDS, and we continue to this day to suffer.
The linking of the origin of aids to a polio vaccine campaign in the 1950s is a theory for which many striking indications are present. This topic is especially covered by investigating-journalist Edward Hopper, information about can be found on aidsorigins.com, among others. I personally find it very upsetting that this theory is completely neglected by bulk of the scientific community (e.g. nature refuses to place any letter about this possibility) and even people that posted above are predisposed with the strange bushmeat theory or even conspiracy against the african people! Please share your views on this topic, thanks
Fascinating article, but 7 of the 19 comments here are toxicly stupid, and their presence here gives them a voice that they shouldn't have.
Clement Dias, while I agree with you that the accusations of racism are ridiculous, I think you should check your logic before you post silly things. Just because you postulate that every plague came from Africa doesn't mean that everything that comes from Africa is a plague. Just sayin'
2 points: 1. If the virus' appearance did coincide with colonial expansion, then the likely explanation would be that expansion into the jungle brought humans into contact with the source of HIV. This doesn't mean HIV is "racist". 2. Kaposi's sarcoma is caused by a herpes virus (HHV8). It's association with HIV is that it only tends to cause cancer in those with immunosuppression (presumebly cytotoxic T cells mop up the affected cells in most infected people with healthy immune systems).