Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases

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This article is a timeline of early AIDS cases.

An AIDS case is classified as "early" if the death occurred before 5 June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic was formally recognized by medical professionals in the United States.^[1][2]

Virus origins[]

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All known subgroups of HIV-1 and HIV-2 are thought to have entered humans as distinct cross-species transmissions of Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) from primates.^[3][4]

SIV exists as distinct lineages that cluster in different species of primates.^[3] HIV-1 is most similar to the SIV found in common chimpanzees (SIVcpz) in southeastern Cameroon, giving rise to the notion that HIV-1 emerged from chimpanzees in this area.^[4] SIVcpz itself emerged in chimpanzees as the result of a recombination of two separate lineages of SIV known to infect red-capped mangabey, and Cercopithecus species.^[3][5]

Early 20th century[]

HIV-1 group M (responsible for the global pandemic) is estimated to have emerged in humans around 1920 near Kinshasa, then part of the Belgian Congo. This estimation was the result of time-scaled evolutionary models being applied to modern samples and retrieved early samples of HIV-1 (M).^[6][7] It had previously been estimated from the genetic differences between ZR59 and DRC60 samples and later samples that HIV-1 group M had jumped into humans in 1908 ± 10 years.^[8]

1930s till 1950s[]

A series of small scale pneumocystis pneumonia epidemics occurred in northern and central European countries between the 1930s and 1950s,^[9] affecting children who were prematurely born. The epidemics spread likely due to infected glass syringes and needles. Malnutrition was not considered a cause, especially because the epidemics were at their height in the 1950s. At that time war torn Europe had already recovered from devastation. Researchers state that the most likely cause was a retrovirus closely related to HIV (or a mild version of HIV) brought to Europe and originating from Cameroon, a former German colony. The epidemic started in the Free City of Danzig in 1939 and then spread to nearby countries in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Switzerland and The Netherlands.^{[citation needed]}

Until 2008, the earliest known sample of HIV-1 was from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo). The sample, named ZR59, was isolated from tissues collected from "a Bantu male" in 1959 and was found to be most closely related to modern genome sequences of HIV-1 (M) subgroup D. In 2008, partial HIV viral sequences were identified from a specimen of lymph node collected from an adult female in Kinshasa, DRC in 1960.^[8] This specimen, named DRC60, was around 88% similar to ZR59, but was found to be most closely related to HIV-1 (M) subgroup A isolates. These two specimens are significant not only because they are the oldest known specimens of HIV-1, but because they show that the virus already had an extensive amount of genetic diversity in 1960.^[8]

Notable potential individual cases of AIDS from this period include:

Sadayo Fujisawa, a sixty-year-old Japanese-Canadian midwife, died in Montreal on 28 June 1945 of pneumocystis pneumonia with Human cytomegalovirus (CMV), diarrhea, and wasting,^[10][11] a group of symptoms which some authors^{[weasel words]} conclude would have led to an automatic diagnosis of AIDS in the early 1980s^{[original research?]}.

Richard Edwin Graves Jr., a 28-year-old World War II veteran who had been stationed in the Solomon Islands, died on 26 July 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee with pneumocystis pneumonia and CMV, what some authors suggest are a sufficient number of opportunistic infections for a clinical course suggestive of an AIDS diagnosis.^[12][13]

David Carr: (Contested, see below.) A Manchester printer (sometimes mistakenly referred to as a sailor) who died on 31 August 1959 following the failure of his immune system; he succumbed to pneumonia. Baffled by what he had died from, doctors preserved 50 of his tissue samples for inspection. In 1990, the tissues were found to be HIV-positive. However, in 1992, a second test by AIDS researcher David Ho found that the strain of HIV which was present in the tissues was similar to the strain of HIV which was found in tissue samples which were collected and analyzed in the late 1980s rather than an earlier strain of HIV (which would have mutated considerably over the course of 30 years). Ho's discovery has cast doubt on the theory that David Carr's death was caused by AIDS.^{[14][citation needed]}

Ardouin Antonio, a 49-year-old Jamaican-born Haitian,^[15][16] has been suggested as a possible early AIDS case. Antonio had emigrated to the United States in 1927, and at the time of his death, he was working as a shipping clerk for a garment manufacturer in Manhattan. He developed symptoms which were similar to the symptoms which David Carr developed, and he died on 28 June 1959, apparently of the same very rare kind of pneumonia that killed Carr. Many years later, Dr. Gordon R. Hennigar, who had performed the autopsy on Antonio's body, was asked whether or not he thought his patient had died of AIDS; he replied "You bet ... It was so unusual at the time. Lord knows how many cases of AIDS have been autopsied that we didn't even know had AIDS. I think it's such a strong possibility that I've often thought about getting them to send me the tissue samples."^[16]

1960s[]

Robert Rayford: A 16-year-old boy who died in 1969, described as the first case of AIDS in the United States.^[17][18]

1970s[]

Researchers drew blood from 75 children in Uganda to serve as controls for a study of Burkitt's lymphoma. In 1985, retroactive testing of the frozen blood serum indicated that 50 of the children had antibodies to a virus related to HIV.^[19]

Arvid Noe: Arvid Darre Noe (an anagram of his birth name Arne Vidar Røed) was a Norwegian sailor and truck driver who was probably infected in Cameroon some time between 1962 and 1965, and died on 24 April 1976, three months after his daughter. Tissues of Røed, his wife and daughter all tested positive for HIV 1 type O, in an epidemiology study in 1988.^[20][21]

Grethe Rask: A Danish surgeon who traveled to Zaïre in 1964 then again in 1972 to aid the sick. She was likely directly exposed to blood from many Congolese patients, one of whom infected her. She became unwell from 1974, then returned to Denmark in 1977, with her colleagues baffled by her symptoms. She died of pneumocystis pneumonia in December 1977. Her tissues were examined and tested by her colleagues and found positive in 1987.^[22][23]

Senhor José (English: Mr. Joseph): A Portuguese man who is the first confirmed case of HIV-2. He was believed to have been exposed to the disease in Guinea-Bissau in 1966. He was treated at the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases by Professor Anthony Bryceson until he died of the disease in 1978.^[24]

Herbert Heinrich: German concert violinist who died in 1979. Tests in 1989 found that he was HIV-positive, and there has been speculation that he was infected by a prostitute who was infected by Noe, but as of 1997, this had not been proven.^[21]

See also[]

• List of HIV-positive people
• History of HIV/AIDS
• Timeline of HIV/AIDS

References[]

External links[]

• Cribb, Julian, The White Death, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1996