Timeline of AIDS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a timeline of AIDS.

1959

• The first known case of HIV in a human is found in a person who died in the Congo (Zhu et al., 1998). However, according to the authors of the 1959 discovery, they never found, nor alleged to have found, HIV, or anything like a full virus. According to these authors, even “attempts to amplify HIV-1 fragments of >300 base pairs (bp) were unsuccessful, . . . However, after numerous attempts, four shorter sequences were obtained” that only represented small portions of two of the six genes of the complete AIDS virus. Citation: Zhu T, Korber BT, Nahmias AJ, Hooper E, Sharp PM and Ho DD. An African HIV-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic. Nature 1998;391(Feb. 5):594-597.

1969

• A St. Louis teenager, identified only as Robert R., dies of an illness that baffles his doctors. Eighteen years later, molecular biologists at Tulane University in New Orleans test samples of his remains and find the virus that causes AIDS. source New York Times.

1976

• Norwegian sailor Arvid Noe dies; it is later determined that he contracted HIV/AIDS in Africa during the early 1960s.

1977

• Danish physician Grethe Rask dies of AIDS contracted in Africa.

1981

• June 5, CDC reports a cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five gay male drug users in Los Angeles. ^[1]
• July 4, CDC reports clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia among gay men in California and New York City. ^[2]

1982

• June 18, CDC MMWR 1982 31(23);305-7

"Exposure to some substance (rather than an infectious agent) may eventually lead to immunodeficiency among a subset of the homosexual male population that shares a particular style of life. For example, Marmor et al. recently reported that exposure to amyl nitrite was associated with an increased risk of KS in New York City. ^[3] Exposure to inhalant sexual stimulants, central-nervous-system stimulants, and a variety of other "street" drugs was common among males belonging to the cluster of cases of KS and PCP in Los Angeles and Orange counties." source of this quote

• July 9, CDC reports a cluster of opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma among Haitians recently entering the United States. ^[4]
• July 27, The term AIDS (for acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is proposed at a meeting in Washington of gay-community leaders, federal bureaucrats and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). source TIME
• September 24, Current Trends Update on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) - United States

CDC defines a case of AIDS as a disease, at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease. Such diseases include KS, PCP, and serious OOI. [...] Diagnoses are considered to fit the case definition only if based on sufficiently reliable methods (generally histology or culture). Some patients who are considered AIDS cases on the basis of diseases only moderately predictive of cellular immunodeficiency may not actually be immunodeficient and may not be part of the current epidemic.

1983

• CDC National AIDS Hotline established.
• March, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues donor screening guidelines. AIDS high-risk groups should not donate blood/plasma products.

1984

• April 23, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announces at a press conference that an American scientist, Dr. Robert Gallo, has discovered the probable cause of AIDS: the retrovirus subsequently named human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986. She also declares that a vaccine will be available within two years.

1985

• March 2, FDA approves first AIDS antibody screening tests for use on all donated blood and plasma intended for transfusion.
• October, a conference of public health officials including representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organisation meet in Bangui and define AIDS in Africa as "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight loss of over 10% and prolonged diarrhoea".

1986

• HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is adopted as name of the retrovirus that was first proposed as the cause of AIDS by Luc Montagnier of France, who named it LAV (lymphadenopathy associated virus) and Robert Gallo of the United States, who named it HTLV-III (human T-lymphotropic virus type III)
• January 14, "By 1996, three to five million Americans will be HIV positive and one million will be dead of AIDS" - NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, New York Times

1987

• "By 1990 one in five heterosexuals will be dead of AIDS" - Oprah Winfrey.

1990

• Ryan White, hemophiliac, (born 1971), dies from AIDS.

1991

• November 24th, Freddie Mercury (lead singer of the band Queen) dies from AIDS

1993

• CDC expands definition of AIDS to include a person with HIV infection and a CD4 cell count below 200.^[5] CDC estimates that the expanded definition could increase cases reported in 1993 by approximately 75%.

1996

• Robert Gallo's discovery that a natural compound known as chemokines can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS is hailed by Science magazine as one of that year's most important scientific breakthroughs.

1997

• September 2, "The most recent estimate of the number of Americans infected (with HIV), 750,000, is only half the total that government officials used to cite over a decade ago, at a time when experts believed that as many as 1.5 million people carried the virus." article in the Washington Post
• Based on the Bangui definition the WHO's cumulative number of reported AIDS cases from 1980 through 1997 for all of Africa is 620,000. ^[6] For comparison, the cumulative total of AIDS cases in the USA through 1997 is 641,087.

1998

• December 10, International Human Rights Day, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is launched to campaign for greater access to HIV treatment for all South Africans, by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments. TAC campaigns against the view that AIDS is a death sentence.

1999

• January 31, studies suggest that a retrovirus, SIVcpz (simian immunodeficiency virus) from the common chimpanzee Pan troglodytes, may have passed to human populations in west equatorial Africa during the twentieth century and developed into various types of HIV.

F Gao, E Bailes, DL Robertson, Y Chen, CM Rodenburg, SF Michael, LB Cummins, LO Arthur, M Peeters, GM Shaw, PM Sharp and BH Hahn. Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes. Nature 397, 436-41 (1999).

RA Weis and RW Wrangham. From Pan to pandemic. Nature 397, 385-6 (1999).

• The role of chemokines in protection from progression of HIV infection to AIDS is changing the medical understanding of AIDS. ^[7]

2000

• WHO estimates between 15% and 20% of new HIV infections worldwide are the result of blood transfusions, where the donors were not screened or inadequately screened for HIV.

2001

• September 21, FDA licenses the first nucleic acid test (NAT) systems intended for screening of blood and plasma donors.

2004

• January 5, "Individual risk of acquiring HIV and experiencing rapid disease progression is not uniform within populations", says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIAID. ^[8]

2005

• January 21, CDC recommends anti-retroviral post-exposure prophylaxis for people exposed to HIV from rapes, accidents or occasional unsafe sex or drug use. This treatment should start no more than 72 hours after a person has been exposed to the virus, and the drugs should be used by patients for 28 days. This emergency drug treatment has been recommended since 1996 for health-care workers accidentally stuck with a needle, splashed in the eye with blood, or exposed in some other way on the job. [9]

2006

• June 5th is the 25th anniversary of the first reported AIDS cases.

• Novemeber 9th 2006, HIV virus found in Gorillas, HIV-1 and HIV-2

[edit] References

[edit] See also

AIDS origin

[edit] External links

• [PDF] Important milestones in the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic