Early spread of HIV in Africa

Early spread of HIV in Africa

04/10/2014

Nearly 100 years ago, the global spread of hi-virus began. In the first decades, the AIDS pathogen spread slowly in the African Congo Basin. But in the 1960s, the behavior of the virus changed and the global pandemic took its course.

Slow spread in the first few decades
Probably the most widespread variant of the HI virus around the year 1920 originated in Kinshasa and spread slowly in the first few decades in the African Congo Basin. But from the 1960s, the first HIV-class M agents, which are now the world's most prevalent, moved from western Central Africa to other parts of the world. Researchers have now reconstructed the early history of the AIDS pathogen from the statistical analysis of HIV genetic sequences. In the journal "Science", the scientists explain the spread of social and historical living conditions in the Congo Basin.

The first reports of AIDS were circulated in the 1980s
It was already known that variants of SI virus (simian immunodeficiency virus) were probably transmitted at least 13 times from monkeys to humans in the early 20th century. Four times lower, the most common and aggressive form was HIV-1. The HI virus, which causes unprotected AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), was first described in 1983 by French researchers Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinouss, who were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery. Parallel to the two Frenchmen made the US scientist Robert Gallo also this discovery. First AIDS reports were circulated from the United States in the early 1980s. To date, nearly 75 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus.

Cradle of the AIDS epidemic
It is reported that the oldest HIV sequences come from two blood samples taken at the end of the 1950s in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An earlier study from Canada identified the cities of Léopoldville and neighboring Brazzaville as the cradle of the AIDS epidemic. The researchers of the current international study created an HIV pedigree from analyzes of pathogen variants. This compares the researchers around Oliver Pybus of the University of Oxford (England) and Philippe Lemey of the University of Leuven (Belgium) with historical data.

Spread along the railway network
Accordingly, the two most important virus variants M and O spread first in the Congo Basin, especially along the railway network. "Data from colonial archives shows that by the end of the 1940s, more than a million people traveled by rail through Kinshasa every year," said Nuno Faria of Oxford University, according to newspaper reports. The spread of M increased threefold from 1960 onwards. It has been reported that two subtypes of M viruses have been spread by labor migrants via Haiti to the United States, Zambia, Angola and other sub-Saharan African countries. The proliferation of sex work and the use of dirty syringes in the healthcare system have also played an important role in the spread. (Ad)