Evidence for Human Infection With an HTLV Iii/Lav-Like Virus in Central Africa, 1959

Chimpanzees Inoculated with Cytomegalovirus Contaminated Polio Vaccines may Explain Origin of HIV-1

“…Nor is the proposed 1920's origin of human infection with HIV supported by compelling descriptions of AIDS-like illnesses in the ensuring 35 or so years. Based on the 1959 detection of ZR59 virus in only one blood sample of 672 tested [19] and on the 1960 detection of DRC60 in tissues of only one of 27 patients samples [6], HIV was clearly not a highly prevalent infection at the time. Nor have there been any subsequent reports of finding HIV-1 sequences in other samples collected prior to 1960.…”

Molecular characterization of non-subtype C and recombinant HIV-1 viruses from Cape Town, South Africa☆

“…A plasma sample from 1959 that was taken from a patient from the Central African country of Zairë (now the DRC), gives credible evidence that the disease has been in humans for some time longer than we first thought and also suggests that the epidemic might have originated in Africa [Nahmias et al, 1986].…”

Viral surface glycoproteins, gp120 and gp41, as potential drug targets against HIV-1: Brief overview one quarter of a century past the approval of zidovudine, the first anti-retroviral drug

“…The date of the zoonosis events have not been precisely discovered but antibodies against group-M HIV-1 were found in a serum sample collected in the Belgian Congo in 1959 [23]. Models of the genetic divergence of the 11 sub-types of group M date a common ancestor somewhere around 1915e1941 [24].…”