Where Does HIV Come From?

I am currently updating my professional knowledge on HIV/AIDS and enrolled in a public health course at Emory University in Atlanta...online in the privacy and convenience of my own home; the modern conveniences of man.  Modernization of the world creates globalization; this affects commerce, intellectual enhancement, social integration, and also pandemic diseases.  Today, I will share with you the history of HIV and how it became a pandemic virus. 

Although AIDS was identified in 1983 (1), the prevailing theorum of the virus' origin and its pandemic course of infection goes back to the late 1890s to 1920s when trails and later, roads were being built across the SubSaharan area of Africa. Bushmeat (chimpanzee meat) was being transported down the Congo River. It is theorized that cross contamination to humans from the chimpanzee that carries SIV(cpz) occurred by blood contamination either by ingestion of the bushmeat or contact of infected meat with open cuts or wounds. The Congo River thereby acted as a transportation mechanism for HIV. Bushmen, railworkers and roadworkers ate the infected meat and became carriers of HIV; as economics would drive global modernization of transport, they moved on to other areas of the continent or travelled back to their country of origin. If one looks at the geographic timeline of the spread of HIV and the spread transportation venues in Africa, there is a direct correlation between the construction phases of the transportation infrastructures and the spread of HIV (2). Trains, planes and automobiles of the 20th century spread the virus via human receptacle to the world's ends. HIV is a lentinvirus; it is slow to manifest signs and symptoms and it can take as long as 10 years or more to express itself. The infected humaninitially has no knowledge of having the virus; thus the spread HIV has manifested at alarming rates (3). Scientists during the 1980s concluded that the disease was spread by homosexual anal and oral intercourse, intravenous drug use, and contaminated blood (primarily hemophaeliac recipients of tainted blood). Unsafe and liberal sexual practices of the era infected homosexuals, heterosexuals and recipients of tainted blood; pregnant women infected their newborns as the infection is spread through breast milk (4). Until public awareness and education of HIV/AIDS was made, along with prevention mechanisms to safeguard further infection, this virus has run rampant and has become the modern plague of our time.

(1) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/virus/origins.html
(2) week one video lecture series from course - not available
(3) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/atlas/
(4) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/virus/virus.html

Effective Treatment for HIV

Today's Blog is a repost courtesy of one of our readers:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2010) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center have identified two drugs that, when combined, may serve as an effective treatment for HIV.
The two drugs, decitabine and gemcitabine -- both FDA approved and currently used in pre-cancer and cancer therapy -- were found to eliminate HIV infection in the mouse model by causing the virus to mutate itself to death -- an outcome researchers dubbed "lethal mutagenesis."

This is a landmark finding in HIV research because it is the first time this novel approach has been used to attack the deadly virus without causing toxic side effects. Because decitabine and gemcitabine are already FDA approved, researchers believe that if their research is effective in large animal models, it will be much easier to expedite the development of the drugs for human use.
The study is a collaboration between molecular virologists Louis Mansky, Ph.D., and Christine Clouser, Ph.D., of the Institute for Molecular Virology and School of Dentistry, as well as medicinal chemist Steven Patterson, Ph.D., from the Center for Drug Design. The findings were recently published online in the Journal of Virology.

"The findings provide hope that such an approach will someday help the 33 million people worldwide who currently live with HIV," Mansky said.
HIV mutates and evolves quickly. Rather than inhibiting virus growth and replication like current HIV drugs, this new drug combination forces the virus to do just the opposite -- evolve beyond control, to the point of extinction.
"HIV's ability to mutate makes it difficult to target and treat," Mansky said. "We wanted to take advantage of this behavior by stimulating HIV's mutation rate, essentially using the virus as a weapon against itself."


One way to decrease cost and expedite the development of novel drugs is by the use of drug repositioning, the process of taking a drug that is used to treat one medical condition, and using it to treat a different illness.
By examining drugs that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the researchers hope to expedite the development of this drug combination because the safety profiles of the two drugs are known.
U of M researchers found that the drug concentrations needed to eliminate HIV infection cause no measureable cell toxicity and were effective against HIV cultures at concentrations well below the current levels used for cancer treatment.

Gemcitabine and decitabine have been administered in pre-clinical trials with mice. Initial findings confirm that the drugs are an effective antiviral therapy for HIV.
The researchers are now in the process of modifying the drugs to forms that can be absorbed by the human body when taken orally.
The study was funded by the Center for Drug Design, Academic Health Center and the National Institutes of Health.

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