Study Shows HIV Dates Back to 1900

According to a study released Wednesday by the University of Arizona in Tucson. researchers now believe the virus which causes AIDS has been around since about 1900. The genetic analysis of a biopsy sample recently uncovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has convinced biologist Michael Worobey that the virus has been in existence for over 100 years, which is about 30 years earlier than previously thought.

The most common form of the virus, HIV – 1, has many similarities to a simian virus, which originated in chimpanzees. Today, over 33 million people worldwide are living with the virus. It has been difficult for researchers to figure out when the virus actually crossed species however.

The first cases of HIV in the U.S. were discovered in 1981, and the oldest evidence of the virus in humans is a 1959 blood sample taken from a man who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.