From Africa to Haiti to America - The Spread of HIV
October 30th 2007 08:13 pm
This week’s online publication for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has is a new article describing the origins of the HIV virus. Michael Worobey, PhD from University of Arizona, and his team basically deduce that the HIV strain that is widespread in America spread from Central Africa to Haiti by Haitian emigrants working in Congo.
It seems that the basic theory is that the virus went from the animal population (chimps) to humans in Africa, developed into different strains of the virus, and made it’s way through the majority of the world through Haiti. There are two additional theories that carry on the story: a) Some of these infected migrants made their way to Miami and introduced it to America there or b) homosexual sex travelers went to Haiti and Trindad, caught the virus and spread it through the homosexual community in America.
This is an abstract of the original article:
The Emergence of HIV/AIDS in the Americas and Beyond
Gilbert MTP, Rambaut A, Wlasiuk G, Spira TJ, Pitchenik AE & Worobey M
(2007) PNAS In pressHIV-1 group M subtype B was the first human immunodeficiency virus discovered and is the predominant variant of AIDS virus in most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the circumstances of its origin and emergence remain unresolved. Here we propose a geographic sequence and timeline for the origin of subtype B and the emergence of pandemic HIV/AIDS out of Africa. Using HIV-1 gene sequences recovered from archival samples from some of the earliest known Haitian AIDS patients, we find that subtype B likely moved from Africa to Haiti in or around 1966 [1962-1970] then spread there for some years before successfully dispersing elsewhere. A ?pandemic? clade, encompassing the vast majority of non-Haitian subtype B infections in the US and elsewhere around the world, subsequently emerged after a single migration of the virus out of Haiti in or around 1969 [1966-1972]. Haiti appears to have the oldest HIV/AIDS epidemic outside sub-Saharan Africa and the most genetically diverse subtype B epidemic, which might present challenges for HIV-1 vaccine design and testing. The emergence of the pandemic variant of subtype B was an important turning point in the history of AIDS but its spread was likely driven by ecological rather than evolutionary factors. Our results suggest that HIV-1 circulated cryptically in the US for approximately twelve years before the recognition of AIDS in 1981.
This is a good review of article written by Worobey.. How HIV Took the World by Storm
How HIV Took the World by Storm
By Jon Cohen
ScienceNOW Daily News
29 October 2007Five HIV isolates that had been forgotten in freezers for 2 decades are revealing new details about how and when the virus spread from Africa to Haiti and then exploded on the world scene.
Much controversy has swirled around the origins of the AIDS epidemic. Because some of the first AIDS cases surfaced in Haitian immigrants to the United States, the Atlanta, Georgia-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) once wrongly lumped Haitians together with hemophiliacs, heroin users, and homosexuals–the “4H Club”–as being at especially high risk of contracting the disease. As a result, Haitians were blamed for spreading the disease to the United States.Since then, the focus has turned away from blame to understanding the epidemic’s origins. To that end, evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues analyzed blood samples saved from five Haitian AIDS patients treated in Miami in 1982 and 1983. “It was the next best thing to being able to travel back in time,” he says. In a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Worobey and co-workers focused on what’s known as HIV-1 subtype B. “This was the variant that led to the discovery of AIDS and so much of the story that reared its head after 1981,” says Worobey.
Molecular analyses of the archival isolates confirmed earlier reports that subtype B traveled from central Africa to Haiti about 1966, entering the United States 3 years later. The researchers’ estimated probability that the virus instead traveled from the United States to Haiti–0.00003–is infinitesimal.
Beatrice Hahn, a virologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, says the study offers the clearest picture yet of how the young epidemic matured: “It’s a very nice piece of evolutionary sleuthing.” One provocative finding, says Hahn, suggests that although several different isolates of subtype B came from Haiti to the United States, only one got a foothold. It had not evolved ways to transmit more readily, says Worobey, and appears to have been “lucky” to have spread among high-risk populations–primarily, gay males in the United States. It then spread to Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and even back to Africa.
Some are not persuaded. Jean “Bill” Pape, who heads the largest AIDS research program in Haiti, says Worobey and co-workers simply “restate prejudices advanced 2 decades ago.” Pape notes that the authors offer no details about the sexual histories of the five Haitian immigrants, who he contends could have been infected by Americans. He also questions whether HIV arrived in 1966, pointing to retrospective studies in Haiti that did not find an AIDS case until 1978.
Interesting read on Haiti and HIV
I Stand With Magic - Magic’s Nonprofit to stop HIV in the black community
Sheeba responded on 02 Nov 2007 at 9:17 am #
Yes, there seems to be plenty of gaps in this theory. It went from chimps to Africans??? Are they implying that Africans or Haitians…??? I’m a bit lost on that…I agree with you. No matter how it got here, let us stop it from claiming the lives of so many people, specifically in the black community.
kdub responded on 02 Nov 2007 at 10:11 am #
I think the Haitians were working in Africa (Congo). Somehow it went from Chimps to Africans (explain that) then the Haitians working there got from the native Africans. I don’t know but somehow Magic has has HIV since I was in elementary school…and I’m about to be 29.
harry joseph responded on 07 Nov 2007 at 8:33 pm #
Any taker out there what is the point that report, who pay for it ?seem to be attacking haitian, could it possible also that american brought to haitians instead of the other way around.
This finding does not hold water,
hj responded on 07 Nov 2007 at 10:00 pm #
Empire State Medical Association Denounces Incomplete Research Claims made by Dr. Gilbert
and Dr. Worobey on “HIV Coming from Haiti” [url]www.nyesma.org [/url]
The Empire State Medical Association is highly concerned about the claims by Michael
Worobey that “AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most
likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a
tragic epidemic”.
We reject the comments that “researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant
arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years — first
in the U.S. population and then to other nations.”
Gilbert and Worobey, analyzed samples from only five of these Haitian immigrants dating
from 1982 and 1983. They also looked at genetic data from 117 more early AIDS patients from
around the world. This genetic analysis allowed them to calibrate the molecular clock of
the strain of HIV that has spread most widely, and calculated when it arrived first in
Haiti from Africa and then in the United States . The researchers virtually ruled out the
possibility that HIV had come directly to the United States from Africa, setting a 99.8
percent probability that Haiti was the steppingstone.
For Haiti , the history of HIV/AIDS represents stigma, discrimination, and racism. In 1982,
scientists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) incorrectly inferred that Haitians were
at increased for acquiring HIV as
a racial group (1). HIV/AIDS therefore became known as the “4H Disease”, affecting
homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. This resulted in unprecedented
national stigmatization and devastating economic, social, and psychological consequences,
decimating the tourist industry in this island nation. As reported at the time: “ Haiti has
been made an international pariah by AIDS. Boycotted by tourists and investors, it has lost
millions of dollars and thousands of jobs at a time when half the work force is jobless.
Even exports are being shunned by some (2).” In 1985, when it became clear that Haitians
share the same risk factors as other groups, the CDC dropped the Haitian association, but
it was too late. HIV and Haiti were inextricably linked in the minds of the general public.
Haiti ’s economy has never recovered.
Gilbert et al once again link HIV and Haiti , stating: “Subtype B likely moved from Africa
to Haiti in or around 1966” and then on to the U.S. Their entire hypothesis is based on
virus isolated from five Haitian-Americans who were living in Miami in 1982-83. No other
information is provided except that they “entered the U.S. after 1975 and progressed to
AIDS by 1981 and hence were presumably infected with HIV-1 before entering the U.S. ” A
host of questions remain. What were their risk activities? Where had they traveled? Did
they have sex with Americans in Haiti ? We do know that the average time of progression of
HIV infection to AIDS and to death in the pre-ART era was 4.5 and 7.4 years, respectively –
these intervals are consistent with the five subjects acquiring the infection in the U.S,
which limits the validity of their findings (3). The authors go on to state: “The HIV-1
epidemic in Haiti exhibits a greater range of viral genetic diversity that the rest of the
world’s subtype B combined”. The authors have not studied the virus in Haiti . Where are
the data to support this claim?
They also state that their aim is to combine phylogenetic, molecular evolutionary,
historical, and epidemiological perspectives in an attempt to reconstruct the history of
the subtype B pandemic. However, epidemiology studies conducted in Haiti do not support the
author’s hypothesis. If the virus was in circulation in Haiti since 1966, there would not
have been a much higher male: female ratio in the early years of the epidemic (80% of the
first Haitian patients were male in the early 1980’s) which rapidly generalized as they
spread the virus to their female partners (4,5). In addition, reviews of large samples of
banked blood from the 1970’s failed to yield a single case of HIV and thousands of
autopsies did not diagnose an AIDS defining illness until 1978 (6). Furthermore, only one
case of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) was noted by Haitian dermatologists prior to 1979 (7). KS is
easily recognizable and it would not have been
missed by Haitian dermatologists for over a decade.
Haiti has overcome enormous obstacles and mounted one of the world’s most successful
responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Yet, the authors restate prejudices advanced two
decades ago in the publication of Pitchenik et al (: “Haitians in Haiti and elsewhere are
at risk of AIDS”. People of all ethnicities in every country are at risk. Scientists need
to be very responsible in their assertions, lest they do great harm.
kdub responded on 07 Nov 2007 at 10:39 pm #
This is a good find Harry. I’m going to post that article on the front page.
But, I don’t know what to think about this research. The main question I ask is “what does this mean?”. It seems that in life that the truth is somewhere in the middle. I don’t know how HIV came to America and how it spread throughout the world but what I do know is that it is here. I think that if Haiti was or was not a gateway for the virus to spread is irrelevant. I want to know if HIV really did go from animal to man in the Congo…or is it a man-made virus like many conspiracy theories say.
In the end, this research just seems like a fingerpointing exercise.