Guess what came to America from Haiti some years ago?
on October 30th, 2007 at 1:51 amStudy shows AIDS came to the U.S. via Haiti, and earlier than thought
By Jia-Rui Chong, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A genetic analysis of 25-year-old blood samples has outlined a new map of the AIDS virus’ journey out of Africa, showing that today’s most widespread subtype first emerged in Haiti in the 1960s and arrived in the U.S. a few years later.
The analysis fills in a gap in the history of the virus, whose migration has been known in only a sketchy form from its origin in Africa in the 1930s to its first detection in Los Angeles in 1981.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA and one of the original discoverers of AIDS, said the analysis placed the virus in the U.S. nearly a decade earlier than previously believed.
“It’s pretty clear evidence for Haiti as a steppingstone,” he said. “The suggestion that the infection was further below our radar than I’d previously suspected is kind of unnerving.”
The analysis, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on a variety of HIV known as subtype B, which is the most prevalent form in most countries outside of Africa.
Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and senior author of the study, analyzed five blood samples collected in 1982 and 1983 from Haitian AIDS patients in Miami. The samples had been stored in a freezer by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Worobey and colleagues looked at two viral genes and compared their sequences with virus samples from around the world.
As a baseline, the used virus samples from Central Africa that are considered some of the earliest forms of HIV.
Because viruses are constantly mutating, the researchers could construct a rough timeline of development by measuring how much the genes in later samples had drifted away from their ancestral forms.
The team found that the Haitian samples were genetically the most closely related to the African virus, indicating that they were the earliest to branch off.
Statistically, the researchers found a 99.7% certainty that HIV subtype B originated in Haiti as opposed to elsewhere, Worobey said. (more…)
Yes, there will be idiots out there that will try to pin the whole thing on Haitians. Just remind them that AIDS is a disease where oftentimes its victims have multiple sexual partners–something that cannot be blamed on Haitians.
In any event, this is a very interesting find.
