英国广播公司报道说，发表在《自然》（Nature）杂志上的一项最新医学研究结果显示，艾滋病毒HIV出现的时间比人们先前认为的要早，大约在一百年前就出现了。
报道说，这个结论是基于对早先的一种鲜为人知的艾滋病毒的分析。研究人员把这种病毒与当今的艾滋病毒HIV以及猿猴感染的艾滋病毒SIV进行了比较。通过比较，研究人员得以估算出猿猴感染的艾滋病毒是何时变异并传到人身上的。
研究人员说，病毒从猿猴传到人，这个过程大约是在一百年前发生的，“也可能更早”。
起初只有几个人感染了病毒，研究人员认为，非洲大陆城市化加快了病毒的传播。
但报道说，这项研究报告对一些关键问题仍然没有给出答案。比如是什么原因导致艾滋病毒和艾滋病的大爆发，以及为什么这种影响猿猴的病毒会变异成能让人患病的病毒。
原始出处：
Nature，455, 661-664，Michael Worobey，Steven M. Wolinsky
Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960
Michael Worobey, Marlea Gemme, Dirk E. Teuwen, Tamara Haselkorn, Kevin Kunstman, Michael Bunce, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, Jean-Marie M. Kabongo, Rapha M. Kalengayi, Eric Van Marck, M. Thomas P. Gilbert & Steven M. Wolinsky
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) sequences that pre-date the recognition of AIDS are critical to defining the time of origin and the timescale of virus evolution1, 2. A viral sequence from 1959 (ZR59) is the oldest known HIV-1 infection1. Other historically documented sequences, important calibration points to convert evolutionary distance into time, are lacking, however; ZR59 is the only one sampled before 1976. Here we report the amplification and characterization of viral sequences from a Bouin's-fixed paraffin-embedded lymph node biopsy specimen obtained in 1960 from an adult female in Léopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)), and we use them to conduct the first comparative evolutionary genetic study of early pre-AIDS epidemic HIV-1 group M viruses. Phylogenetic analyses position this viral sequence (DRC60) closest to the ancestral node of subtype A (excluding A2). Relaxed molecular clock analyses incorporating DRC60 and ZR59 date the most recent common ancestor of the M group to near the beginning of the twentieth century. The sizeable genetic distance between DRC60 and ZR59 directly demonstrates that diversification of HIV-1 in west-central Africa occurred long before the recognized AIDS pandemic. The recovery of viral gene sequences from decades-old paraffin-embedded tissues opens the door to a detailed palaeovirological investigation of the evolutionary history of HIV-1 that is not accessible by other methods.
