#18 – HIV (1/2): How It All Began

00:00:05: The symptoms of such an acute infection are typically influenza-like illness, monocleosis, rash, diarrhea and the last one to two weeks.

00:00:41: Welcome to this week's episode of Birological!

00:00:44: This was recorded on June eighth of twenty-twenty six in Vienna.

00:00:49: So, I thought it's time to talk about very important virus that has been highly problematic in the last decades.

00:00:58: And thats the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

00:01:02: and because this is a really complex topic there are alot of data & things to discuss.

00:01:09: i thought im going to split up.

00:01:10: so Im gonna talk today about the virus itself ,the disease its causing And then I'll do a second episode about basically what happened after the virus showed up in human population, problems with stigma of people who got infected.

00:01:32: Vaccine development to certain degree because that wasn't successful yet but also development of therapeutics and prophylactics which has been very successful.

00:01:45: But today we are going to start with the easy stuff and that's the virus itself, The disease.

00:01:52: And the history.

00:01:54: so human immunodeficiency virus... ...and you will see it is not just one virus.

00:02:00: It is part of the Retroviridae family and it belongs to the lentivirus genus.

00:02:06: Lenti comes from Italian lento slow.

00:02:10: I think That´s a term used in music and was named like this because The virus has a very long incubation time before it leads to severe disease.

00:02:46: Interestingly, it contains two copies of the genome.

00:02:50: The copies are protected by a nuclear capsid and there's also an intergrace in reverse transcript that is associated with the genome And we'll get into those broad lens design enzymes which are super important for the virus.

00:03:06: Then there's a capsid.

00:03:08: So in addition to the nuclear capsit There's additional capsid that protects the genome.

00:03:14: There is a protest that can be found in the virus particle, and then there's layer of matrix protein followed by lipid layers.

00:03:24: So basically this is an envelope virus And on outside we have spike proteins sitting inside the lipid envelope.

00:03:32: It's confusing but this spike protein in the case of HIV is called Envelope.

00:03:40: So, there's a lipid envelope and then there is the protein in this envelope that called Envelope which my opinion doesn't make much sense but it was named.

00:03:48: There are the spike proteins And the spike protein is composed of two subunits.

00:03:53: one is called GP-Hundred-Twenty.

00:03:55: That´s the cap structure.

00:03:58: The second sub unit is the GP-Fourty-One.

00:04:00: that´s stock structure.

00:04:02: Three of these timers come together to form an envelope trimer.

00:04:07: What is important to say, that this protein spike is highly glycosylated.

00:04:11: So there's n-linked glycans attached with it and they're chilled most of the surface of the spike protein from the immune system.

00:04:19: That one of the ways HIVs escaping them.

00:04:22: in response The spike protein binds two receptors.

00:04:28: One of the receptors for HIV CD four Thats a marker thats found on a specific subset of decels and CD-IV decels, they're also called helper decels.

00:04:40: And then the virus also uses second receptor that can either be CCR-V—that's a chemokin receptor found on macrophages for example —and so primary isolates of HIV from patients typically bind to Cd-IV or CCR V are good at infecting macrophage and macrophagies actually disseminate the virus in their body.

00:05:04: but there are also virus isolates that bind to CD-IV and then to CXCR-IV.

00:05:11: And these are basically more infecting T cells, and a lesser degree macrophages.

00:05:17: I believe The problem with this virus is it targets immune cells right?

00:05:22: So CD- IV T cells the helper cells.

00:05:25: they're very important for developing immune responses and these are infected by the virus.

00:05:31: This can lead to direct death of this CD-IV cells or they can be killed by CD-AT cells, so CD-ATT cells are cytotoxic T cells that kill infected cells.

00:05:42: but the virus also infects as I mentioned macrophages dendritic cells which is super important for developing a good immune response.

00:05:51: And it also infect microglia immune-like cells that are part of the nervous system.

00:06:00: So I already mentioned one way for the virus to escape from the immune response and there is this glycan shield, which it has on its spike protein.

00:06:09: another one is of course that the virus mutates a lot.

00:06:11: It's an RNA virus And The next mechanism is that the various can hide in cells and lay dormant DNA fragment and this is done by these reverse transcriptase protein or enzyme that the virus carries in its spherion.

00:06:37: And then, this DNA fragment is transported to the nucleus where our genome sits right?

00:06:43: With a second enzyme that I mentioned.

00:06:46: they integrates The virus integrates it's genome into our cellular DNA into our genome basically for a very long time without recognition by the immune system.

00:07:00: During that time, there's basically no viral proteins made or new virus and it is impossible for an immune system to recognize this specific cell infected with HIV.

00:07:12: And then at some point the virus can get reactivated.

00:07:16: Then the cells produce more virions and replication starts and virus spreads again.

00:07:23: So that's a very, very interesting mechanism.

00:07:27: And typically it always goes the other way around right?

00:07:31: Usually you have DNA and then this is in cellular mechanisms but also in terms of viruses-DNA viruses.

00:07:39: The DNA is converted into RNA But to see go the another way round from RNA to DNA super rare It basically only these retroviruses can do.

00:07:51: One important thing that I also should mention is this CCR-V receptor, right?

00:07:55: This is one of the receptors that the virus can use.

00:07:58: And we know that... ...the European population at this part of the European population has a deletion in this CCL-V Receptor.

00:08:09: It's basically about if the gene for CCR V is missing and it leads to loss of thirty two amino acids.

00:08:20: HIV cannot bind to this version of CCR-V, it's called CCR V delta-XXII because the XXII amino acids are missing.

00:08:29: And about nine percent of the European population are heterozygous for these CCR v delta-xXII meaning that one of the chromosomes... Of course we have two of each chromosomes.

00:08:43: One chromosome carries this mutation and another one wild type.

00:08:48: And if you have that, typically HIV progression is much slower and people progress slower to AIDS.

00:08:57: If your homozygous for CCR-V Delta-XXII That's about one percent of the European population You cannot get HIV.

00:09:06: these people are just not getting infected with HIV.

00:09:10: This seems like a positive thing but it also has negative sides.

00:09:15: If you carry this CCR-V Delta-XXII variant in your genome, You're more susceptible to certain other viruses including certain flaviviruses like West Nile virus.

00:09:26: So it's a balance.

00:09:26: for some viruses This gives protection.

00:09:29: For others, this mutation makes you more susceptible.

00:09:34: Okay so we talked about the virus.

00:09:37: How about disease?

00:09:38: First of all how do get infected with HIV?

00:09:42: There are basically three main ways.

00:09:44: The first one is sexual contact.

00:09:47: if you look at it globally most of the HIV infections Are acquired through heterosexual contact?

00:09:54: If we look at Western countries, North America and Europe Most of the hiv infections are acquired by men who have sex with man.

00:10:04: So globally its more a heterosexual transmission.

00:10:08: in north america and europe It's more homosexual transmission or transmission from men who have sex with man.

00:10:16: And that makes sense in a way because it turned out that anal sex has the highest transmission risk, followed by vaginal sex and lowest risk of transmission comes with oral sex for oral sex is actually very low.

00:10:32: It's not impossible.

00:10:34: but the transmission rates are Two more things that are important in terms of sexual transmission.

00:10:40: The first one is if people have other sexually transmitted diseases, gonorrhea syphilis and such then it's much easier to transmit HIV.

00:10:52: So this an important factor.

00:10:54: If there're other STDs present the risk for acquiring or giving somebody HIV is higher.

00:11:02: They are an important fact and this is something that we'll talk about in the second episode.

00:11:07: Nowadays there's really good medications for HIV to control it, do a level where its almost undetectable in blood And if their viral load is very low or well managed even somebody who has HIV positive cannot transmit HIV to someone else.

00:11:24: Even they have unprotected sex And that's also something important to know, because it might take away a little bit from the stigma people with HIV still have.

00:11:34: So if the disease is well managed there are basically no risk for others in terms of sexual transmission.

00:11:42: The second important transmission route is via bodily fluids and here specifically by blood.

00:11:50: This can happen through many ways.

00:11:53: When HIV started to circulate blood products For example, clotting factors for hemophiliacs were a big issue because of course nobody knew about the virus.

00:12:04: So these products are not screened for the presence of the virus and so using this blood product could lead to acquisition of HIV.

00:12:14: Another important point was blood transfusions And also organ transplantations.

00:12:21: Of course nowadays there's screening tools for that.

00:12:24: These products are super safe But back in the day, when they first started to circulate those were also major transmission routes.

00:12:32: Then of course there can be other exposures too blood sometimes physicians When you work with patients that have HIV and there is exposure via injuries And so on and so forth.

00:12:46: do the blood off the patient?

00:12:47: That could be a risk.

00:12:49: needle sticks Can be at risk during medical procedures.

00:12:53: another risk, of course.

00:12:55: And that's a big one is intravenous drug use with needle sharing.

00:13:00: That has been historically a big issue for HIV transmission and it still is in some areas The last transmission route important from mothers to babies.

00:13:11: this can happen during pregnancy.

00:13:13: This could be happening during delivery or breastfeeding.

00:13:18: So those are the main three transmission routes sexual contact bodily fluid specifically blood, and then the third row is transmission from mother to baby.

00:13:29: So once people are infected there's an incubation time of about two-four weeks And a good proportion of infected individuals actually develop acute infection.

00:13:40: The symptoms such as acute infections are typically influenza like illness monocleosis rash diarrhea the last one to two weeks, very often they are not recognized because they're very general right?

00:13:55: You don't think about HIV when you think about an influenza like illness.

00:13:59: So this is typically overlooked.

00:14:02: and then after one or two weeks these symptoms disappear And people go into the next phase which is a latency phase for the virus.

00:14:10: it's also called chronic HIV.

00:14:14: This phase can last from anywhere between three to twenty years On average, it's about eight years and during that phase often people have no symptoms at all.

00:14:24: Of course the virus is slowly replicating in this killing of CD-IVD cells but for a long time that doesn't cause any symptoms.

00:14:33: Towards the end of these phases People often develop fever there might be some weight loss muscle pain And what happens also?

00:14:44: enlarged lymph nodes develop and those lymph nodes then can stay enlarged for quite some time, often four months.

00:14:51: And typically this is relatively painless.

00:14:54: but that often happens during the end of their latent zero-tochronic HIV period.

00:15:00: Then in next phase it's AIDS development of AIDS and AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

00:15:09: about ninety five percent of untreated individuals who are infected with HIV will progress to AIDS.

00:15:17: About five percent of the infected individuals do not progress to AIDs and they're called long-term nonprogressors, so they seem to be protected.

00:15:28: it's not completely KOY but basically not resistant to the virus but they seemed to be resistant.

00:15:39: And then you have very special people, and it's usually one out of three hundred that are called elite controllers.

00:15:47: In these people even the virus replication is suppressed to a very low level almost undetectable.

00:15:54: Again we don't understand my knowledge well why some people control the virus like that while others progress through AIDS.

00:16:04: How has AIDS defined?

00:16:08: what happens is that the cell count of CD-IV cells, so these T helper cells drops below two hundred cells per microliter of blood and That basically when we start to call this AIDS.

00:16:24: This is where adaptive immune system Basically can't respond to infections anymore.

00:16:31: And in addition to that lower cell count, there's usually an occurrence of diseases that are specific for AIDS.

00:16:40: And AIDS starts to develop typically around ten years after infection.

00:16:46: so some of the symptoms appear muscle loss prolonged fevers night sweats chills general weakness diarrhea and then these eight-specific Some of them are infections.

00:17:03: One common one is pneumonia with fungal agent, with a fungal pathogen that's typically relatively harmless for healthy people.

00:17:13: but if you don't have CD-IV decels anymore or AIDS then this can actually lead to a fatal infection and this is called Pneumocystis pneumonia.

00:17:22: so the fungus is called pneumocystus another relatively frequent infection Candidosis, so candida is also fungus a yeast actually that typically in healthy individuals it's easily controlled but this case can cause severe infections.

00:17:43: Often there are recurrent respiratory infections and generally you see a lot of opportunistic infections with bacteria fungi viruses and parasites the typical another problem for that would be very well controlled by a healthy immune system.

00:18:03: In addition to this, there is often an occurrence of virally-induced cancers, often cancers caused either by herpes viruses or human papilloma virus.

00:18:14: Typically, caposis sarcoma has been reported during AIDS, Burkitt's lymphoma and other types of blood cancer through HPV cervical cancer.

00:18:27: And basically what happens there is that the immune system can't control these malignant cells very well anymore and thats why their cancer rates are much higher.

00:18:36: The same cells might, that became cancerous may have been removed by an immune system in a healthy individual right away but this case the immune systems doesn´t function any more.

00:18:46: so these cancer types come up.

00:18:48: What also could happen is that psychiatric or neurological symptoms occur.

00:18:53: almost all cases leads to these symptoms, this infections and these types of cancers.

00:19:01: At some point in most all cases lead to death.

00:19:05: so early days of HIV or AIDS developing or getting these HIV infections was basically a death sentence.

00:19:15: This has changed quite a bit.

00:19:17: Of course the situation is not great when you already developed AIDS But specifically if you just catch the infection, there's a lot that can be done.

00:19:25: Again we'll talk about it in the second episode of HIV.

00:19:30: The big question with HIV is where did this come from?

00:19:34: And I think we have learned quite alot during these last years and its actually super interesting story.

00:19:41: In my opinion There are viruses that are called Simeon Immune Deficiency Viruses or a Simeone Immune deficiency virus, that circulate in all kinds of non-human primates.

00:19:55: Specifically in monkeys.

00:19:57: and it seems at some point some of these Simean Immune deficiency viruses or SIVs jumped from monkeys either to chimpanzees or the gorillas For chimpanzees, that can be easily explained.

00:20:13: These monkeys had the infections and like the chimpanzee which liked to hunt monkeys and eat them were infected during the process of eating monkeys basically raw right?

00:20:26: So they get exposed all kinds of bodily fluids blood you know meat All kind of organs and so on and so forth when they eat these monkeys And so you can imagine how they got infected.

00:20:38: It's a little bit less clear for gorillas.

00:20:40: Gorillas are basically vegans, despite their size they eat a plant-based diet and so it is not clear how the virus could jump into gorillas from these monkeys.

00:20:52: but that did happen.

00:20:54: And basically for HIV there're different groups or genetic lineages There one called M. That´s the main lineage.

00:21:03: Basically what spread globally seemed to have jumped from chimpanzees to humans.

00:21:11: So basically, from monkeys... ...to chimpanzee and then from chimp-an-seas to humans.

00:21:18: And there is a hypothesis that this happened in Cameroon.

00:21:21: That's based on viruses found in chimpanzeese in Cameroun.

00:21:25: so potentially it happened here.

00:21:29: How did these happen?

00:21:30: Again This can be relatively easily explained.

00:21:34: Humans have been eating other non-human primates for a long time.

00:21:39: Like the chimpanzees, humans like to hunt and in the process of hunting chimpanzee's In this case one can easily imagine how there was contact with blood And how a hunter could be infected with a virus from a chimpanzeee.

00:21:56: So in addition group, this M genetic lineage.

00:22:00: There is also an N-group which also seemed to have jumped from chimpanzees to humans and then there's a P-group who seem to have jumped from gorillas to humans And the O-group that also seems to have jumps from gorillas to humans.

00:22:15: This potentially happened in Cameroon but it happens in Congo.

00:22:22: N,P &O are not very common.

00:22:24: they have been detected, but it's really M that is the main problem and the main circulating virus.

00:22:31: Now there are all these sequences from the chimpanzees, from the gorillas ,from humans and from monkeys And you can actually do phylogenetic analysis to figure out when this virus has evolved or split

00:22:47: etc.,

00:22:48: This was done for group M and group O and the idea is that M split off a common ancestor around nineteen thirty, or maybe little bit earlier in nineteen twenty.

00:23:01: But basically we are talking about early twentieth century here And this also matches well with first detected viruses.

00:23:10: We'll get to it.

00:23:11: but they were potentially not potentially, some of the first detections were in retrospective analysis of samples from individuals from Kinshasa and the DRC in Congo from the nineteen sixties.

00:23:27: So that's HIV-one.

00:23:29: I hope i didn't confuse you too much with it but all these groups M N P O are part of HIV one most people don't know.

00:23:38: there is also HIV two.

00:23:41: So HIV-II is similar to HIV-I.

00:23:44: It's maybe a little bit less aggressive and it certainly much less common than HIV- I, And this virus jumped from monkey...from the Suti Manga bee into humans.

00:23:57: at least that's their hypothesis.

00:23:59: again This could have been through bushmeat Through hunting these monkeys.

00:24:09: Dye forest is also where a very rare strain of Ebola occurred at some point, so that's an interesting area.

00:24:18: And in comparison to HIV-I which seemed to have jumped more or less central Africa into humans here with HIV-II we are talking about West Africa and also with HIV II we have genetic diversity there A and B groups A and B for HIV too.

00:24:39: And those are the ones that I found more frequently in humans, again it's not very frequent anyways.

00:24:45: there is also C D E F G H and those have been detected really rarely.

00:24:53: so it seems potentially dead end infections where people got infected.

00:24:58: but then the virus didn't spread among human at all or not much.

00:25:04: And it seems that HIV-II already caused the first small epidemic in Guinea-Bissau between nineteen fifty five and nineteen seventy.

00:25:14: So most of this was probably driven by chimpanzees hunting monkeys, then humans hunting chimpanzee so basically push mid consumption.

00:25:26: There's evidence these jumps into humans may happen still to this day.

00:25:32: The worst out is done in Cameroon, for example.

00:25:35: For zero prevalence of SIBs or the simian immunodeficiency virus and the zero prevalence was higher than two percent meaning that a sizable proportion of population in Camerun exposed to these monkey viruses.

00:25:51: so it's very likely scenario where the virus could have jumped like this.

00:25:56: but This Simeon immunodeficiency virus has been around for tens of thousands years in non-human primates and humans probably have hunted these animals for tens or thousands of years.

00:26:10: So why did all this viruses start to spread into the human population in early twentieth century?

00:26:18: There is speculation about that, some makes a lot sense but I guess it's still speculation and hypothesis.

00:26:27: one points is that colonization in the late in the nineteenth century, late nineteenth-century up into the early twentieth century was really a big factor here.

00:26:40: First of all large cities were established which means there where lot people had higher density and easy making it easier.

00:26:49: The first factor is that large cities were established in Africa, which means higher population density.

00:26:55: Which makes it easier for a virus to jump from humans-to-humans and with that also adapt the humans.

00:27:03: In addition what became relatively common in these areas are injections to treat bacterial infections, injections of tropical diseases and vaccination And back in the day, often the same needle was reused for one person after another without sterilization.

00:27:26: That could have led to serial passage of these viruses which would help them to adapt to humans.

00:27:35: In addition to that, there was also an increase in STDs and sexually transmitted diseases.

00:27:41: And we already discussed that STD increased the transmission rate for HIV so this might have been a factor here.

00:27:50: The last factor specifically what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo is Belgium which was the colonial force built a vast railway system and made it much easier for people to travel.

00:28:05: And mobility was higher, that could also have increased the spread of these viruses.

00:28:11: So there are number factors that would cause this to happen.

00:28:16: in late nineteenth century early twentieth century The first evidence of human affections really comes from the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties Again, so the likeliest scenarios that these chums happened in the nineteen twenties or nineteen thirties and the first evidence of human infections.

00:28:39: In this area specifically in the Congo come from samples that were retrospectively tested for HIV.

00:28:47: there was a positive sample from a man in the DRC from...that was taken in nineteen fifty nine.

00:28:54: another sample form nineteen sixty from a woman turned out to be positive and then again from the man in nineteen sixty six.

00:29:02: So this was done retrospectively, these are basically the earliest positive human samples known for HIV.

00:29:10: Then there's the curious case of Robert Rayford who was a sixteen year old who lived in St Louis In The US And in nineteen-sixty-six developed caposis acoma Basically AIDS symptoms and died of pneumonia.

00:29:27: samples from him were tested in nineteen eighty one and I believe the test found that he had an HIV like virus could have been HIV.

00:29:37: It's not completely clear.

00:29:38: if it was, you know... If it WAS HIV i believe but they COULD HAVE BEEN THE EARLIEST CASE IN THE UNITED STATES.

00:29:47: There was also retrospective testing of samples taken by children in Uganda in nineteen seventy.

00:29:52: three of seventy five samples taking back then fifty were positive when they were tested in nineteen eighty-five.

00:30:02: So certainly also indicating spread of the virus already in the area, so Uganda is I think east off of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

00:30:12: then The first detection in Europe again from retrospective testing samples was From nineteen seventy six.

00:30:20: this was a Norwegian sailor.

00:30:25: in the medical literature, the name Arvid Neu is often used.

00:30:31: And so he developed first eight symptoms in nineteen sixty nine and then died in nineteen seventy six .And his wife also died ,and his seven year old daughter died.

00:30:44: These samples were tested in nineteen eighty-eight and found to be positive for HIV.

00:30:49: So it looks like trips in the area, in Central Africa got infected there brought disease home probably infected his wife and then his daughter might have been infected during pregnancy or during birth for breastfeeding.

00:31:08: So that's also an interesting case And it was the first European case.

00:31:13: Then there is a case of Greta Rask who has a Danish surgeon.

00:31:18: She works as a surgeon another name for what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, an old name.

00:31:29: So she was in Syria in nineteen sixty four and nineteen seventy two on two trips And the hypothesis that she came into contact with blood from patients.

00:31:39: She died in nineteen seventy seven from pneumocystis pneumonia.

00:31:44: Then samples were tested in nineteen eighty-seven and found positive for HIV.

00:31:51: So, the idea is that a virus spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo or ... From the Congo area in general to Haiti.

00:32:01: In late nineteen sixties and then spread on from Haiti into

00:32:06: U.S.,

00:32:07: in the late nineteen sixty's early nineteen seventies.

00:32:11: I think it has at least a hypothesis.

00:32:13: one thing also points in this direction is that in nineteen seventy-one a company from Florida started to produce plasma products in Haiti and exported them to the US.

00:32:26: And that might have fueled introduction of HIV into the U S as well, it seems that in early nineteen seventies HIV already reached New York City on their reports off specifically intravenous drug users developing what was back then called junkie pneumonia which I guess was Pneumocystis pneumonia and there are already zero positives known from New York City in nineteen seventy-eight.

00:32:58: Again this was among intravenous drug users.

00:33:02: so it seems that what's already quite some spread of HIV undetected in the nineteen seventies, In The US.

00:33:09: What should also be mentioned is the case of guitar to gar who was an Air Canada flight attendant, is known as K-Zero-Fifty-Seven or patient O. I believe the O stands for Outside of South California.

00:33:24: Some reports have made a patient zero out of him and i think there's also an idea that he was patient zero in US and potentially the person brought HIV to U.S.. The reason for this is that in nineteen eighty three when The first approximately two hundred fifty individuals with AIDS were identified.

00:33:46: It turned out that Gatayatuka had contact, sexual contacts directly or indirectly with forty of them and so the idea was patient zero, the first one who was infected and brought the virus in.

00:34:02: But this is of course not true.

00:34:05: it's clear now that the virus was already circulating widely In The United States before before nineteen eighty three And Before He got sick probably even before he got infected.

00:34:17: okay just following the timeline here on June fifth nineteen eighty two The CDC published a report with US Centers for Disease Control published a report of cluster of pneumocystis pneumonia in five homosexual men in LA.

00:34:36: And that was the start off what we now know as AIDS, so this is first official description anyway and the disease initially got number names.

00:34:47: one of them was grit gay related immunity efficiency.

00:34:51: another on was Kate community acquired immunodeficiency.

00:34:56: And then there was also the term IVH, which was standing for Homosexual-Hemophiliac-Hiation and Heroin.

00:35:05: Which basically summarized four marginalized groups that had a very high risk of getting infected... ...and getting AIDS.

00:35:15: Then in August two years ago, the term acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS was agreed on.

00:35:25: I think what is really important to point out, because marginalised groups were at high risk of getting this disease initially different marginalised group actually.

00:35:35: This disease came with a lot social stigma and then there was a lot fear Because that time it was an uncurable disease.

00:35:43: people died from it And they had terrible deaths.

00:35:46: So again there are lots of stigmas associated And we'll talk about that a little bit more in the next episode.

00:35:54: How activism helped to overcome and help shape up momentum, develop diagnostics, develop therapeutics... ...and try to develop vaccines?

00:36:05: But this outbreak had really bad consequences!

00:36:10: In nineteen eighty seven there were already sixty thousand eight deaths every year globally.

00:36:16: of course these numbers went up over time And as I mentioned, we'll talk about the current situation and also countermashes that have been developed in the next episode.

00:36:28: But i wanted to say a few words also about the discovery of the virus.

00:36:33: In May of nineteen eighty-three two researchers at Institut Pasteur in France François Barresino C & Luc Montagnier announced They had found a virus that was associated with one of these cases and they called this virus LAV, lymphotenopathy-associated virus.

00:36:57: And in May of nineteen eighty four Robert Gallo In the US also found a Virus That Was Associated With One Of These Infected Patients and he Called This Virus Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type III.

00:37:16: And in January of nineteen eighty-five it turned out that the samples were actually, if I'm not wrong from the same individual and that Montagnier and Tessinossi in Paris.

00:37:31: Bob Gallo in US had actually described this virus.

00:37:35: This was a causative agent for AIDS.

00:37:40: In May of nineteen ninety six this virus was termed a human immunodeficiency virus.

00:37:47: In two thousand eight, Parisienousi and Montagnier actually got the Nobel Prize for the discovery of HIV.

00:37:54: unfortunately Bob Gallo didn't get the Nobel prize For unclear reasons.

00:37:59: he would have deserved it as well.

00:38:00: these discoveries were made independently And basically they found the same virus from the same patient.

00:38:07: I think its also worth mentioning that Luc Montagnier developed also a kind of disease after he got the Nobel Prize.

00:38:14: This is known as novel disease where people who make significant contributions to science and get the Nobel prize then go a little bit crazy, start to spread ideas which are not based on science in his case it was studies on electromagnetic signals from DNA homeopathy and diabetic ideas, and spent basically a few years on spreading these things that actually had no scientific basis at all.

00:38:46: So that's it for today.

00:38:48: I covered the virus HIV, the disease AIDS ,and also the history of HIV and AIDS.

00:38:56: In the next episode, we are going to talk about social impact that the disease had.

00:39:01: The stigma came with it and activism that drove development of countermeasures forward.

00:39:07: I'll talk about vaccines.

00:39:09: so far we have been unsuccessful in developing HIV vaccines And also talked about treatments and prophylactics.

00:39:17: That has been highly successful for the development of treatment.

00:39:22: And now, if HIV infection is diagnosed early people can be medicated.

00:39:28: They can live relatively normal lives.

00:39:31: they have a life span and when their treated the control of virus basically also are not spreading through sexual contact.

00:39:44: so there has been alot successes with HIV research in development of counter measures.

00:39:50: And I'll also talk a little bit about the current situation, which is of course influenced by cuts in funding for countermeasures.

00:40:00: So as always if you have any comments questions suggestions please write an email to virological at podcastwerkstatt.com and If you like this podcast feel free to support it on steady.

00:40:15: so thanks for listening in until next week bye.

00:40:23: If you're enjoying the podcast and would like to support our work, visit us on Steady.

00:40:28: You'll find a link in the show notes!

00:40:31: And don't forget to follow & leave a review of your favorite podcast app.