AIDS. Hypothesis on the origin and emergence of HIV
Verdrager, J.
Bulletin de la Societe de Pathologie Exotique 88(1) 54-59; Discussion: 59-60
1995
ISSN/ISBN: 0037-9085 PMID: 7787456 Document Number: 440128
Cross-species transfer of simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV) may occur accidentally. This transfer, with the possible exception of the virus of the sooty mangabey monkey, leads to a biological dead-end. Thus, only serial passages of the virus from man to man, through blood inoculation, could explain its progressive evolution from SIV to HIV. Such an artificial cycle may have been initiated, in the 1910s, following the introduction of syringes and needles into the region of the African Great Lakes, a region where some communities were considering that the inoculation of blood from certain individuals or from monkeys was a very powerful magical remedy. The first HIV-1 infection may have emerged in the 1940s, in one of these isolated communities among which the virus remained at first confined before spreading to other populations.