Good News, and Old News, about HIV

There were several important announcements in the HIV/AIDS battle this week. First was the awarding of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to two French virologists,Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, for discovering that the HIV virus causes AIDS. The side story here is the controversy that the American scientist Robert Gallo is credited by some as being the "first" to discover the virus. "First" is very important to scientists, therefore, there have been some pretty heated exchanges between Montagnier and Gallo in the past. If you are interested in some good drama, there are some decent books out there on the subject, including opposing views written by both Gallo and Montagnier.




The Nobel committee has attempted to end the dispute by announcing that Montagnier was the discoverer, a fact that is widely accepted by the scientific community, but given that there is no love lost between the Americans and the French, it is doubtful that this will die down soon.

The second announcement was that the HIV virus is probably much older than we originally thought. A discovery at the University of Arizona by Dr. Michael Worobey backs the date that the virus jumped from chimps to humans sometime around 1900 - at least 30 years earlier than originally thought.

This should not be treated as some sort of background story. In fact, it is probably the most important, and under-reported, story of the week. If you take a look at the map from the CDC below, you can see that the AIDS pandemic is showing no signs of abating.



By understanding when the virus actually made the jump from chimps to humans, we can get a better grasp on its rate of evolution. One of the biggest obstacles to the development of effective HIV vaccines has been the rapid mutation rate of the virus. As a virus mutates, it evolves, or changes, its associated proteins. Vaccines frequently target the unique proteins on the surface of a virus. Without an understanding of how this virus is continuing to evolve, the development of a vaccine could actually create more harm than good, since vaccinated people may feel that they are "safe" and can return to unsafe sexual practices and other risky behaviors. Worobey's work should provide some important insight into how HIV evolves. We should be seeing some interesting developments in the near future stemming from this discovery.