Scientists discover that the HIV pandemic began in the Congo … – Galileo

 The HIV virus have emerged in the early twentieth century in southern Cameroon, transmitted to humans through handling or consumption of game meat of chimpanzees. However, the disease remained a regional infection until the 1920s, when it was Leopoldville, then capital of the Belgian Congo, where he found the perfect conditions to proliferate and, decades later, turn into a pandemic that has infected 75 million people on the planet today. This was the conclusion of a study published on Friday (3/10) in the journal Science.

 The research was led by the universities of Oxford and Leuven – an international team of researchers analyzed historical records and DNA samples of the virus dating from the 1950s With this information, it was possible to draw a family tree of AIDS and, through models statistical, determine the point of origin of the epidemic in space and time. Leopoldville was named in honor of King Leopold II of Belgium, who held the African country as a colony. Today the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa is called.

 “It seems that a combination of factors in Kinshasa in the early twentieth century created the ideal conditions for the emergence of HIV, leading to widespread and unstoppable epidemic unfolded by Sub-Saharan Africa,” he told British newspaper The Independent, the Oxford professor Oliver Pybus, an author of the article. At that time, Kinshasa was the economic center of the region and grew rapidly, with train lines that swarmed with workers and overcrowded boats coming and going at Congo river. According to historical records, more than a million people were transiting annually by the railroads of the Congolese capital in the 1940s.

 Besides timely ride in transportation, the virus also took advantage of other factors: the time, the city had a greater number of men than women, which eventually stimulate prostitution. Their own health centers, even unknowingly helped in the spread of disease through injections given with needles without proper sterilization.

 The researchers believe that, throughout history, various types of HIV passed from monkeys to humans in a similar manner, but did not exceed the regional sphere. “We wanted to answer the question: why this turned into a pandemic,” Pybus told the British newspaper The Guardian. AIDS is caused specifically known as HIV-1 group M viruses, and began to be diagnosed outside Africa in the early 80s, in the United States.

 Via The Guardian