HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 26, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Using genetic analyses of 40-year-old blood samples, scientists have arrived at a clearer understanding of the introduction and spread in North America of the virus that causes AIDS.
One myth already debunked by the research: That there was a “Patient Zero” who somehow caused the epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus ( HIV) in the United States.
“In many ways, the historical evidence has been pointing to the fallacy of Patient Zero for decades,” said Dr. Richard McKay, who studies the history behind the AIDS epidemic and was a co-author on the new study.
“We now have additional [genetic] evidence that helps to consolidate this position,” McKay said in a news release from the University of Cambridge in England. He is a professor in the university’s departments of history and philosophy of science.
The new genetic research was published Oct. 26 in the journal Nature and was led by Dr. Michael Worobey, of the University of Arizona. In their study, scientists used high-tech methods to compare the genetic blueprints (genomes) of HIV derived from blood samples dating from the late 1970s.
The samples came from eight HIV-infected patients. Similar DNA data from a ninth patient, Gaetan Dugas, had already been recorded.
Dugas was a French-Canadian who died of AIDS in 1984 and was posthumously blamed as being the HIV epidemic’s so-called “Patient Zero” in later media reports.
Based on Worobey’s new work, the truth of the virus’ spread in North America appears to differ greatly from the notion that it originated with one infected man.
Tracing genetic markers in the various stored blood samples, the scientists concluded that HIV arrived in the United States in New York City in about 1970 — more than a decade before it was officially identified by doctors — and then spread across North America.
The results confirm prior findings on how HIV entered and spread through the United States. They also conclusively prove that the Caribbean region was a crucial steppingstone from which HIV entered North America from its origins in Africa, according to the Arizona researchers.
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