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History Of Hiv/Aids

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History Of Hiv/Aids News

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AIDS is caused by a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which originated in non-human primates in Central and West Africa. While various sub-groups of the virus acquired human infectivity at different times, the present pandemic had its origins in the emergence of one specific strain – HIV-1 subgroup M – in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1920s.

There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent, easily transmitted and is the cause of the vast majority of HIV infections globally. The pandemic strain of HIV-1 is closely related to a virus found in chimpanzees of the subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes , which live in the forests of the Central African nations of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. HIV-2 is less transmittable and is largely confined to West Africa, along with its closest relative, a virus of the sooty mangabey ( Cercocebus atys atys ), an Old World monkey inhabiting southern Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and western Ivory Coast.