Historic Overview of HIV/AIDS

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer provides a brief discussion of the natural history of HIV/AIDS and looks at current principles of treatment. The paper discusses the two pre-dominant strains - HIV-1 and HIV-2 - separately, delving into the different genomic origins of each and how each strain possibly crossed the species barrier. The writer maintains that in spite of the best efforts to determine HIV's definite origins and source, speculation still abounds.

From the Paper:

"Up to the present, scientific experts from diverse biological science backgrounds have yet to establish the origins of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Efforts to comprehend how the originally zoonotic infection crossed the species barrier have been at best speculative. Present understanding of the origins of HIV, through phylogenetic analysis, implicates a simian origin: the globally pandemic HIV-1 related to the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus infecting chimpanzees (SIVCPZ) and the strain dominant in West Africa, HIV-2, related to SIV infecting sooty mangabeys (SIVSM). The complete understanding of the probable SIV progenitors of the present human strains of HIV is key to arriving at new ways to treat and, more desirably, prevent HIV/AIDS."

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